சுயசரிதை
Versatile character actress Florence Eldridge often found the stage more fitting for her talents than her film roles. Beginning her career at seventeen as a chorine in the 1918 production of "Rock-a-Bye Baby," she performed with touring companies and on Broadway, soon taking on leading roles. Born in Brooklyn, Eldridge developed a passion for acting early on and joined the Theatre Guild immediately after high school.
She gained recognition with the 1921 play "Ambush" and quickly rose to prominence as Annabelle West in "The Cat and the Canary" (1922) and as the stepdaughter in "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1922). She also portrayed the capricious Daisy Fay Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby" (1926). While touring, she met actor Fredric March, whom she married after starring with him in "The Swan" (1927). Subsequently, their repertory company prohibited them from appearing together on stage, considering it 'unromantic' for married actors to play lovers. To resolve this, Florence and Fredric moved to Hollywood in 1928, where theatrical actors were in demand with the advent of talkies. From then on, Florence largely subordinated her career to her husband's.
Eldridge appeared on screen as early as 1923, debuting in Six Cylinder Love, a role she had previously performed on stage. In 1929, she featured in three films, including co-starring with Fredric March in The Studio Murder Mystery. In The Greene Murder Case (1929), she bested Jean Arthur in a rooftop fight above the Hudson River. Although most of her later roles were minor, two stood out: Fantine in Les Misérables (1935), again alongside March, and Queen Elizabeth I, a formidable counterpart to Katharine Hepburn's Mary Stuart in Mary of Scotland (1936).
During World War II, the inseparable Marches traveled extensively, entertaining American troops abroad. In 1942, they attracted attention on Broadway with "Skin of Our Teeth," where they engaged in a widely publicized on-stage feud with co-star Tallulah Bankhead. Throughout the decade, Florence alternated between stage and screen. Near its end, she delivered one of her finest film performances as Lavinia Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest (1948), opposite Fredric March as her husband. She portrayed his on-screen wife again in the acclaimed Inherit the Wind (1960), depicting the Scopes Trial.
Eldridge's most acclaimed role came late in her career on Broadway, playing the drug-addicted Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). This performance earned her the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.
