Appreciating Aline MacMahon

So I watched The Mouthpiece this morning. I hadn't noticed beforehand that the part of Warren William's secretary was played by Aline MacMahon. She does a good job here, in a role that's similar to the one played by Joan Blondell in Lawyer Man.

In fact, MacMahon had quite a few good supporting roles in her career. She was most active in the 1930s, but was still able to get a few good film roles up until her retirement in the mid-1960s. I'm a bit surprised as to just how many times I've mentioned her. There's films like One-Way Passage or Ah, Wilderness earlier in her career, with great late roles in a movie like I Could Go On Singing, or one I haven't blogged about before, The Man From Laramie, in which she plays a widowed rancher who takes James Stewart in.

MacMahon also showed some flair for comedy in Gold Diggers of 1933. That movie I first blogged about in honor of then birthday star Guy Kibbee, who happens to show up in The Mouthpiece as an Irish bartender. (Kibbee will show up at 8:00 PM tonight in Lady For a Day as well.) And then there's Life Begins, in which MacMahon plays one of the nurses in the maternity ward.