Verree Teasdale

Verree Teasdale

Verree Teasdale (March 15, 1903 – February 17, 1987) was an American actress born in Spokane, Washington. A second cousin of Edith Wharton, Teasdale attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and trained as a stage actress at the New York School of Expression. She first appeared on Broadway in 1924 and performed there regularly until 1932. After co-starring in Somerset Maugham's play The Constant Wife with Ethel Barrymore in 1926–27, she was offered a film contract, and her first film, Syncopation, was released in 1929. Teasdale appeared older than her physical age, which enabled her to play bored society wives, scheming other women and second leads in comedies such as Roman Scandals (1933). In 1935 she played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which her bored and sneering looks to Theseus's blandishments brought life and color to this often bland and minor role. In 1935 she married actor Adolphe Menjou, and they remained together until his death in 1963. Teasdale and Menjou appeared together in two films, The Milky Way in 1936 and Turnabout in 1940, and were also co-hosts of a syndicated radio program in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

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