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Anne Revere
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Anne Revere

Anne Revere was an American film actress. Born in New York, New York Revere was a direct descendant of American Revolution figure Paul Revere. She made her Broadway acting debut in 1931 in The Great Barrington and followed this success with a role in Double Door. She made her film debut in the 1934 film version of the latter, and she quickly established herself as a character actress, specialising in worldly wise but frequently sharp tongued supporting roles.

She received Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nominations for three motherly roles during the 1940s - as the mother of Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943), Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet (1944) for which she won the award, and Gregory Peck in Gentleman's Agreement (1947). Her last role of note was as the mother of Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951), before her career was destroyed by the McCarthy witchhunts. Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Revere pled the Fifth Amendment and her Hollywood career was ruined. For the rest of her life she maintained that the unsigned copy of a Communist Party registration card that was used as evidence of her party membership was a fake.

With her husband, the playwright and director Samuel Rosen, Revere moved to New York where the couple ran an acting school, and Revere returned to Broadway. She won a Tony Award in 1961 for her role in Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. Still an outsider in Hollywood, Revere was not considered for the film version which was played by Wendy Hiller.

In her later years she appeared in supporting roles in television before her death from pneumonia in Locust Valley, New York.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2004.

Anne Revere Facts

OccupationActress
BirthdayJune 25, 1903
SignCancer
BirthplaceNew York, New York, USA
Date of deathDecember 18, 1990 (age 87)
Height5' 5" (1m65)  How tall is Anne Revere compared to you?
Awards1946 Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (for National Velvet)

Selected Filmography

Not available.