Nora Cecil (September 26, 1878 – May 1, 1951) was an English-born American actress whose 30-year career spanned both the silent and sound film eras.
Cecil's career began on the stage, when she debuted in London at age 19. She appeared in the Broadway production The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast, which ran for more than 240 performances at the Broadway Theatre in 1901âÂÂ1902. (A 1930 newspaper article says that Cecil "made her debut, three decades ago, on the London stage.")
Cecil appeared in well over 100 feature films and film shorts. In 1915, she moved from the stage into films, her first appearance being in a starring role in The Arrival of Perpetua, directed by ÃÂmile Chautard. She often played "welfare workers, landladies, schoolmistresses and maiden aunts".
One of the most significant roles was in the W.C. Fields vehicle The Old Fashioned Way in 1934. Some of the other notable films in which Cecil appeared include Ernst Lubitsch's historical romance The Merry Widow, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald; the 1939 version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring Mickey Rooney; and the John Ford classic Stagecoach, with John Wayne.
Her final acting performance was in a small role as Louisa Ames in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, starring Rosalind Russell.
Cecil was married to real estate broker Russell Evans, who died in 1949. They had two children: Dorothy Cecil, who was also an actress, with a short stage-career, and Kenneth Russell Evans, who became a petroleum engineer.
She was cremated.
(Per AFI database)