Background
Jessie Royce Landis was born Jessie Royce Medbury in Chicago, the only child of Ella Gill and Paul Royce Medbury, a musician and portrait painter.
Jessie Royce Landis was born Jessie Royce Medbury in Chicago, the only child of Ella Gill and Paul Royce Medbury, a musician and portrait painter.
Hoping his daughter would follow in his footsteps, Paul Medbury enrolled her in music school at an early age to study the piano. She found her way into an elocution class instead and never again considered any career but acting.
In 1924, Joseph Schildkraut, scouting for an actress to play the Young Countess in his touring company of The Highwayman, saw her perform. He cast her in the play, which opened in Chicago in December of that year. After her engagement in The Highwayman, Landis moved to New York City, where she landed the lead role in a touring company performing Wings of Chance, a play by Hugh Stange with a short run. She spent a season with Jessie Bonstelle's repertory company in Detroit, where she debuted as Jo in Little Women, then one of the American theater's most coveted roles, to excellent reviews.
Returning to New York City in 1926, Landis played opposite Otis Skinner in a revival, and later a tour, of The Honor of the Family. She went on to work with Laurette Taylor in Delicate Justice. Later she went back to Broadway two weeks to replace Estelle Winwood in a comic role in The Furies. She spent the summer of 1929 at the Elitch's Gardens in Denver, Colorado, and on her return to New York found herself an established presence on the stage.
She made a brief foray into films in 1930 but did not become a recognized film actress for almost twenty years.
She worked frequently with the Theatre Guild, in New York and on tour, directing as well as acting. After her second divorce, Landis consoled herself with her work, her friends, and her volunteer activities for the American Theatre Wing. One of the highlights of Landis's career was her sojourn on the London stage starting in 1950, when she starred in Larger Than Life, based on a novel by Somerset Maugham. She followed this part with her first full-fledged musical role, the part of Mistress Knight in And So to Bed.
From the late 1940's until her death, Landis enjoyed success in films, usually playing an aristocratic mother. She appeared as Grace Kelly's mother in To Catch a Thief (1955) and The Swan (1956); June Allyson's mother in My Man Godfrey (1957); and Cary Grant's mother in North by Northwest (1959), despite the fact that she and Grant were the same age. She made frequent radio and television appearances as well. Her last film was Airport (1970). She also published her autobiography, You Won't Be So Pretty (But You'll Know More) (1954). Landis died in Danbury, Connecticut.
Quotations: She revealed herself as a pragmatist and an optimist: "I've never been ashamed of anything I have done; I have never knowingly caused unhappiness. Unhappiness is like a disease and it is contagious. I just try to be happy and I think that is catching too. "
Quotes from others about the person
According to a press release in one of her scrapbooks at the New York Public Library, while married to Smith she was "one of the best known hostesses in the literati set in New York, gathering around her table most of the leading playwrights, novelists, critics, and newspapermen. "
Jessie Royce met a twenty-two-year-old businessman named Lester Landis in Evanston. When she was seventeen, he persuaded her to marry him, despite her parents' fears that she was too young. She moved to Evanston to live with his family, and a year later their only child was born. Later the couple discovered that their son suffered from Down's syndrome and needed to be placed in a special school. She and her husband had been growing apart for some time and he suggested that she choose between him and the theater. She chose the theater, although she remained married to him and continued to return to Evanston to visit his family for some years, particularly when their son was home from school on vacation. After her son's death in 1928, Landis cut her ties with Evanston and her husband, whom she divorced.
In 1937 Landis married journalist and playwright Rex Smith.
The marriage was marked by frequent quarrels. After four years the couple separated; in 1944 they divorced.
In 1956, Landis married Major General J. F. R. Seitz, chief of the U. S. military mission to Iran.