Biography
Educated at Goucher College and at Johns Hopkins and Columbia University, American actress Mildred Dunnock was introduced to films in her stage role as Miss Ronsberry in The Corn Is Green (1945). Her next major assignment was as Willy Loman's long-suffering wife Linda in Arthur Miller's 1948 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman, a part that she also essayed in the 1952 film version. Dunnock preferred stage work and college lecture tours to the movies, but returned before the cameras occasionally in such films as 1952's
Viva Zapata (directed by the director of
Salesman,
Elia Kazan), Hitchcock's
The Trouble with Harry (1955), and
Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). One of Dunnock's most spectacular film appearances was her unbilled role in the gangster melodrama
Kiss of Death (1948); she was the wheelchair-bound old lady pushed down a flight of stairs by giggling psychopath
Richard Widmark! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide