Louisa Catherine Proctor (November 12, 1878 â August 24, 1967) was a Canadian actress whose career included roles on Broadway, in silent films, and on radio and television. She was called "one of the authentic great ladies of the stage" in a Montreal newspaper in 1956.
Proctor was born in New Edinburgh, Ontario, one of the six children of William Proctor and Catherine McDonald Proctor. Her father worked in real estate and hotels, and died in 1892. She began performing as a dramatic reader while still a girl. She attended the Toronto College of Music, and appeared in college theatrical productions.
Proctor had a busy stage career for over five decades. She toured with stock companies beginning in 1902. Her stage credits included roles in The Pretty Sister of José, The Other Girl, Peter Pan, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1906), Paid in Full, Society and the Bulldog (1908), The Concert (1910âÂÂ1912), The Easiest Way (1912), The Governor's Lady (1913), Now and To-morrow (1915), Depths of Purity (1915), Out There (1917), The Wooing of Eve (1917), Happiness (1917âÂÂ1918), The Matinee Hero (1918), The Mirage (1920âÂÂ1921), Ambush (1921), The Wife with the Smile (1921), East of Suez (1922), Bristol Glass (1923), Macbeth (1924), The Steam Roller (1924), Ariadne (1925), The Importance of Being Earnest (1926), L'Aiglon (1927âÂÂ1928), Electra (1928), Girl Trouble (1928), Sakura (1928), The Royal Box (1928âÂÂ1929), The Ghost Parade (1929), Greater Love (1931), If Booth Had Missed (1932), Nine Pine Street (1933), Ah, Wilderness! (1935), The Puritan (1936), Howdy Stranger (1937), Reflected Glory (1937), Miss Quis (1937), Biography (1937), The Late George Apley (1944âÂÂ1945), Arsenic and Old Lace (1943, 1950, 1956), Mistress of Jalna (1953), and Separate Tables (1958).
On radio, Proctor was in a 1934 production of a comedy Thursday Night. She appeared in several silent films, and had small roles in several more sound pictures. "Yes, I have seen myself in a film," she told a Toronto newspaper in 1915. "It feels most uncanny. Sometimes I thought, 'Surely I never looked as badly as that?'"