Jeanette Nolan

your fiend mr. jones

29Sep10

Ironically, for someone who worked for as long (and as much as she did), there is not much written about her. She was born (and died) in Los Angeles. Got her start in radio and, like so many radio actors (including Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, the list goes on), got her start in films with fellow radio actor, Orson Welles in his film version of “Macbeth”. Played Lady Macbeth (Her only lead in a film), and like so many character actors, was known for playing older and older parts, so that, by the time she hit her 50’s, she had been known as an elderly person for the better part of 25-30 years. Her husband was another character actor (and former radio actor) John McIntire and they would appear together a lot as husband and wife. You see them in “Psycho” as the kindly sheriff and his wife, but it is a credit to what you got in the McIntire/Nolan package that she was also the voice of Norman’s mother. Nolan always had an edge, even when playing the gazillion little old ladies, a glint of steel in her eye as if to say “this far- and no further”. Like the movies, she only ever had one lead in television and that was a short-lived “Gunsmoke” spin-off in the early seventies called “Dirty Sally”.