Kathleen Howard

Kathleen Howard
Born	(1884-07-27)July 27, 1884 Clifton, Ontario, Canada
Died	Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Opera singer, actress, magazine editor
Years active	1934-1951

Kathleen Howard (July 27, 1884 - April 15, 1956) was a Canadian-born American opera singer magazine editor and character actress from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. She spent her childhood in Buffalo, New York and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery there.

Biography

She created the role of Zita in Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. She was also memorable as Amelia, the nagging, shrewish wife of W.C. Fields in It's a Gift (1934). She appeared in two other films of W.C. Fields: You're Telling Me! (1934) and Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935).

Howard was part of the repertory system in the opera houses of Metz and Darmstadt previous to World War I. She told of her life as an opera singer in an autobiography, Confessions of an Opera Singer (Knopf 1918).

Death

Howard died on April 15, 1956, aged 71, of undisclosed causes, in Hollywood, California.

Legacy

Howard appears to have not made as many opera recordings for companies of the acoustical era such as did her contemporaries Geraldine Farrar and Mary Garden; her few recordings were vertical-cut discs made for the American branch of Pathé Frères in 1918 which received limited distribution. Among them are Harry Burleigh's arrangement of the spiritual "Deep River," arias from Charles Gounod's Faust and Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore (in English), and the "Barcarolle" from Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann with Claudia Muzio (in French).

Selected filmography

Film
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1934	Death Takes a Holiday	Princess Maria
	You're Telling Me!	Mrs. Edward Quimby Murchison
	It's a Gift	Mrs. Amelia Bissonette	Starring W.C. Fields
1935	Man on the Flying Trapeze	Leona Wolfinger	Alternative title: The Memory Expert
1937	Stolen Holiday	Madame Delphine
1939	First Love	Miss Wiggins
1940	Young People	Hester Appleby
1940	Mystery Sea Raider	Maggie Clancy
1941	Blossoms in the Dust	Mrs. Sarah Keats
	Ball of Fire	Miss Bragg	Alternative title: The Professor and the Burlesque Queen
1942	Take a Letter, Darling	Aunt Minnie	Alternative title: Green-Eyed Woman
	You Were Never Lovelier	Grandmother Acuña	Uncredited
1943	My Kingdom for a Cook	Mrs. Theodore Carter	Uncredited
1944	Laura	Louise, Ann's Cook	Uncredited
1945	Eadie Was a Lady	Aunt Priscilla
1946	Centennial Summer	Deborah
1947	The Late George Apley	Margaret, the Maid	Uncredited
	Cynthia	McQuillan
1948	The Bride Goes Wild	Aunt Susan
1950	Born to Be Bad	Mrs. Bolton
Television
Year	Title	Role	Notes
1951	The Bigelow Theatre		1 episode

External links

• Works by Kathleen Howard at Project Gutenberg
  • Confessions of an Opera Singer freely available at gutenberg.org in many formats.
• Kathleen Howard at the Internet Movie Database
• Kathleen Howard at Find a Grave