Jessie Ralph
Also Known As: Jessie Ralph Chambers, Jessie Rolph, Jessie Ralph Patton
Biography: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jessie Ralph (born Jessie Ralph Chambers, November 5, 1864 – May 30, 1944) was an American stage and screen actress, best known for her matronly roles in many classic motion pictures. She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1864. She made her acting debut in 1880, at the age of sixteen. She made it to Broadway, where George M. Cohan cast her in many of his musicals, but she also excelled at dramatic roles. Although she made her Hollywood debut in 1916, in a motion picture career that would eventually span 25 years, she only became a permanent Hollywood actress in 1933. She was nearly 70 at this time, so her roles were limited to matronly roles, but her expertise at stealing scenes captured the imagination of cinema-goers of the time. Her best-known roles are as Greta Garbo's maid in Camille, as W.C. Fields' battle-axe of a mother-in-law in The Bank Dick, as Myrna Loy's supercilious aunt Katherine in After the Thin Man, and as Nurse Peggotty in David Copperfield. She starred in 55 movies altogether, 52 between 1933 and 1941. Jessie Ralph retired from Hollywood in 1941, after her leg was amputated. She died four years later in her home town of Gloucester at the age of 79. She was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA
Adult: No
Birthday: November 04, 1864
Age: 160 years old
Gender: Female
Deathday: May 30, 1944
Popularity:
Known For:
The Bank Dick
Overview: Egbert Sousé becomes an unexpected hero when a bank robber falls over a bench he's occupying. Now considered brave, Egbert is given a job as a bank guard. Soon, he is approached by charlatan J. Frothingham Waterbury about buying shares in a mining company. Egbert persuades teller Og Oggilby to lend him bank money, to be returned when the scheme pays off. Unfortunately, bank inspector Snoopington then makes a surprise appearance.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-11-29
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Double Wedding
Overview: A bohemian free spirit helps meek Waldo win back his fiancée and falls in love with her over-controlling sister in the process.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-10-15
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The Madonna of the Slums
Overview: A rich artist has never completed a master painting because he could not find a model for the face, sees the wife of a man in hard luck begging on the street so she can buy milk for her baby, and the artist secures just what he desired.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1919-11-05
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Little Lord Fauntleroy
Overview: An American boy turns out to be the heir of a wealthy British earl. He is sent to live with the irritable and unsentimental aristocrat, his grandfather.
Genres: Drama Family
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-03-06
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After the Thin Man
Overview: Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is missing, and find themselves in a mystery involving the shady owners of a popular nightclub, a singer and her dark brother, the cousin's forsaken true love, and Nora's bombastic and controlling aunt.
Genres: Comedy Mystery Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-12-25
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Camille
Overview: Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure. One such woman is Marguerite Gautier, who begins a sumptuous romance with Armand Duval.
Genres: Drama Romance History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-12-26
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Les Misérables
Overview: In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
Genres: Drama History Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-04-20
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Elmer, the Great
Overview: Elmer does not want to leave Gentryville, because Nellie is the one that he loves. Even when Mr. Wade of the Chicago Cubs comes to get him, it is only because Nellie spurns him that he goes. As always, Elmer is the king of batters and he wins game after game. When Nellie comes to see Elmer in Chicago, she sees him kissing Evelyn and she wants nothing to do with him anymore. So Healy takes him to a gambling club, where Elmer does not know that the chips are money. He finds that he owes the gamblers $5000 and they make him sign a note for it. Sad at losing Nellie, mad at his teammates and in debt to the gamblers, Elmer disappears as the Cubs are in the deciding game for the Series.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-04-29
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Captain Blood
Overview: Dr. Peter Blood, unjustly convicted of treason and exiled from England, becomes a notorious pirate.
Genres: Adventure Action History Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-12-26
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Murder at the Vanities
Overview: Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager Jack Ellery calls in his friend, policeman Bill Murdock, to help him investigate. Bill thinks Jack is offering to let him see the show from an unusual viewpoint after he forgot to get him tickets for the performance, but then they find the corpse of a murdered woman and Bill immediately suspects Eric of the crime.
Genres: Music Mystery Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-05-18
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Drums Along the Mohawk
Overview: Albany, New York, 1776. After marrying, Gil and Lana travel north to settle on a small farm in the Mohawk River Valley, but soon their growing prosperity and happiness are threatened by the sinister sound of drums that announce dark times of revolution and war.
Genres: Drama History War
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-11-10
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Cocktail Hour
Overview: Cynthia Warren, independently wealthy through her ability as an illustrator and poster artist, rebels against the premise that every woman is destined for matrimony and motherhood and decides she has as much right as a man to play around.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-06-05
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Evelyn Prentice
Overview: A criminal lawyer's wife is blackmailed when she is falsely accused of infidelity.
Genres: Drama Mystery Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-11-09
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The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
Overview: A chic American jewel thief falls in love with one of her marks, an English lord.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-02-19
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One Night of Love
Overview: Mary Barrett is an aspiring opera singer who is taken under the wings of a famous operatic maestro, Guilio Monterverdi. After spending endless working hours together and arguing, their relationship develops into love. But, jealousy and misunderstandings prevent Mary and Guilio from acknowledging their true feelings.
Genres: Music Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-07-16
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Child of Manhattan
Overview: Paul Vanderkill is extraordinarily wealthy because his grandfather happened to buy farmland in what was to become Midtown Manhattan. The Loveland Dance Hall is one of the tenants of the Vanderkill estates. To reassure his aunt Sophie, Vanderkill visits Loveland to determine whether it is as disreputable as Sophie suspects. There he meets a dime-a-dance girl, Madeleine MacGonagal, who charms him with her quaint proletarian accent. They begin a secret affair, which turns into a secret marriage when pregnancy ensues. When the baby fails to survive, Madeleine decides that since he had married her only for the baby's sake, she should make haste to Mexico to secure a divorce. There she meets Panama Canal Kelly, a former suitor who now owns a silver mine. Her plans for divorce and quick remarriage are complicated when Vanderkill arrives to confront her.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-02-11
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The Affairs of Cellini
Overview: The 16th-century sculptor woos the Duchess of Florence despite the duke.
Genres: Comedy Drama History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-08-24
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The Lady from Cheyenne
Overview: Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!
Genres: Comedy Drama Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1941-04-11
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Port of Seven Seas
Overview: In the French port of Marseille, a young woman named Madelon is in love with a young sailor, Marius. Discovering she is pregnant after Marius sets out to sea for several years, she marries another man to prevent the child being born out of wedlock.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1938-07-01
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The Kid From Texas
Overview: A loud-mouthed Texas cowpuncher tries his hand at polo finding himself at odds with high society and trying to save a floundering Wild West show.
Genres: Comedy Romance Western
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-04-14
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Enchanted April
Overview: Mrs. Lotty Wilkins is an unhappily wife whom's life husband and romance have departed. In order to possibly salvage some of the missing elements in her life she rents an old Italian mansion and sharing it with three women. Here the four women plan to spend the month of April away from the cares of home, husbands and the everyday monotony.
Genres: Comedy Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-02-01
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The Unguarded Hour
Overview: A blackmailer tries to stop a woman from revealing evidence that could save a condemned man.
Genres: Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-04-10
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Bunker Bean
Overview: A shy office worker becomes a hero when a fortune teller calls him another Napoleon.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-06-26
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Love Is a Headache
Overview: A press agent for a Broadway actress whose career is going downhill attempts to get her some publicity by having her adopt two orphans, without her knowledge.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1938-01-14
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I Want a Divorce
Overview: Comedy about newlyweds wondering if their marriage was a mistake.
Genres: Drama Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-09-20
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Metropolitan
Overview: Opera prima donna leaves the Metropolitan to form her own company with Tibbett as leading man. She leaves this company too which means Tibbett and company must carry on without her.
Genres: Drama Music Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-10-17
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Ann Carver's Profession
Overview: Newlyweds experience marital problems when the wife's highly successful job as an attorney overshadows her husband's stagnant career.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-06-09
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Hold That Kiss
Overview: Two young people meet at a wedding and begin dating, each thinking the other is extremely wealthy. Comedy.
Genres: Romance Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1938-05-13
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I Found Stella Parish
Overview: A blackmailer preys on an actress who is trying to protect her daughter from her past.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-11-16
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David Copperfield
Overview: Charles Dickens' timeless tale of an ordinary young man who lives an extraordinary life, filled with people who help and hinder him.
Genres: Drama Romance Adventure
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-01-18
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Walking on Air
Overview: A strong-willed young woman hires a student to impersonate a boorish French count and brings him home to meet her parents.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-09-11
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We Live Again
Overview: Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-11-01
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Nana
Overview: Young Parisian Nana wards off of a boozed-up military officer at a local restaurant, and fellow diner Gaston Greiner is so impressed with her pluck that he decides to make her a performer at his musical theater. Soon, Nana is a star, and the girlfriend of Greiner and two other men. But when he learns that she's been getting around, Greiner fires her. As she tries to reclaim her singing job while dodging yet another suitor, her treachery might get the better of her.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-02-01
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Yellow Dust
Overview: After he's accused of a series of stagecoach robberies, an innocent man has to find the real crooks.
Genres: Western Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-03-12
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The Blue Bird
Overview: Peasant children Mytyl and Tyltyl are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the fairy Berylune. On their journey, they're accompanied by the anthropomorphized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, and Bread, among other entities.
Genres: Family Fantasy Adventure Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-01-15
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Star Dust
Overview: When Hollywood film studios reject her because she's too young, an Arkansas woman sets out to build a career as an actress on her own.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-04-06
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Paris in Spring
Overview: Afraid of marriage, Simone (Mary Ellis) breaks off her long term engagement with her fiancé Paul de Lille (Tullio Carminati). Paul heads to the top of The Eiffel Tower with thoughts of suicide. In another part of Paris and also afraid of marriage, Mignon (Ida Lupino) breaks it off from her young lover (James Blakely). Despairing, Mignon also climbs to the top of the The Eiffel Tower intending to leap to her death. There she meets Paul and the two compare stories. After discussion, Paul dissuades her from leaping and the two conspire to make their respective partners jealous by pretending to have an affair with each other.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-05-27
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Cafe Society
Overview: A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.
Genres: Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-03-03
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Four Girls in White
Overview: Young Women go through Nursing School together, each with their own motivation for being there. They learn more than how to be a Nurse.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-01-27
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Jalna
Overview: A young poet, accompanied by his new bride, returns home to his large family at their Canadian farm.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-08-09
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Mickey the Kid
Overview: A bank robber and his boy make a run for it during winter in a bus full of children.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-07-03
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I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby
Overview: In I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby, Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental gangster who abducts songwriter Johnny Downs and forces him to write a love ballad. It is Crawford's hope that the song will reach out and touch his long-lost childhood sweetheart. I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby was based on James Edward Grant's short story Trouble in B Flat; echoes of the basic premise later resurfaced in the 1957 "A" picture The Girl Can't Help It.
Genres: Comedy Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-05-01
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St. Louis Blues
Overview: A Broadway musical comedy star tires of the same old grind and flees the city. She runs into the skipper of a showboat who befriends her, and they make plans to put together a musical revue. But a competing carnival owner hatches a scheme to put an end to the show before it begins.
Genres: Comedy Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-02-03
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I Live My Life
Overview: A society girl tries to make a go of her marriage to an archaeologist.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-10-04
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Vanessa: Her Love Story
Overview: The Victorian wife of a mad baron waits years for a British soldier sent to Egypt.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-03-01
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The Good Earth
Overview: China, during the rule of the Qing Dynasty. The arranged marriage between Wang Lung, a humble farmer, and O-Lan, a domestic slave, will endure the many hardships of life over the years; but the temptations of a fragile prosperity will endanger their love and the survival of their entire family.
Genres: Drama History Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-06-02
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The Garden Murder Case
Overview: Two people with ties to rich murdered socialite Lowe Hammle die from unusual suicides—but Vance suspects foul play.
Genres: Mystery Crime
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-02-21
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The Romance of Celluloid
Overview: Several behind the scenes aspects of the movie-making business, which results in the enjoyment the movie going public has in going to the theater, are presented. They include: the production of celluloid aka film stock, the materials used in the production of which include cotton and silver; construction crews who build sets including those to look like cities, towns and villages around the world; a visit with Jack Dawn who demonstrates the process of creating a makeup design; the screen testing process, where many an acting hopeful gets his/her start; the work of the candid camera man, the prying eyes behind the movie camera; a visit with Adrian, who designs the clothes worn by many of the stars on screen; and a visit with Herbert Stothart as he conducts his musical score for Conquest (1937). These behind the scenes looks provide the opportunity to get acquainted with the cavalcade of MGM stars and their productions that will grace the silver screen in the 1937/38 movie season.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1937-08-27
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They Met in Bombay
Overview: A jewel thief and a con artist are rivals in the theft of a valuable diamond and gem necklace in Bombay and as the Japanese Army invades China.
Genres: Adventure Romance Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1941-06-27
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San Francisco
Overview: A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.
Genres: Drama Romance Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1936-06-26
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Mark of the Vampire
Overview: Sir Borotyn, a prominent Prague resident, is discovered murdered in his home, with all indications pointing to a vampire assault. The victim's friend, Baron Otto, and the physician who analyzes the body are certain that the vampire is the mysterious Count Mora, or perhaps his daughter, but receive little help from the law. Professor Zelen, an expert in the occult, is called in to assist with the investigation.
Genres: Mystery Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1935-04-26
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Coming Out Party
Overview: In this romance, a lovely young debutante falls in love with a jazz violinist. Her mother wants her to marry a wealthy young man, but the strong-willed girl initially demurs until the night of her debut. Her social adviser fills the debutante’s dance card with partners, which inflames the violinist.
Genres: Romance Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-03-09
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The Girl from Avenue A
Overview: A tough girl raised in the streets finds that her dialect and manners are helpful as source material for a playwright.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1940-08-09
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Such a Little Queen
Overview: Queen Anne of Gzbfernigambia, who is betrothed to King Stephen of Hetland, flees to the United States with Baron Cosaco when a revolution breaks out in her country.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1921-06-28
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