Background
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Nelson was the daughter of vaudeville actress Eva Mudge.
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Nelson was the daughter of vaudeville actress Eva Mudge.
She attended Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles and went on to study at the American Laboratory Theatre in New York City during the early 1920s.
She is known for her roles in such films as Wilson, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Humoresque, 3 Women, The Late Show and Awakenings. She was the wife of the late John Cromwell, whom she acted alongside on multiple occasions. After Group Theatre ended in 1941, Nelson relocated to Hollywood.
Throughout the 1940s, she made a number of movies for 20th Century Fox and other Hollywood studios.
One of these was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), directed by fellow Group Theatre member Elia Kazan. She also appeared in Kazan"s film The Sea of Grass in 1947.
While offered a New York stage role as a wife in what turned out to be Death of a Salesman, Nelson turned down most acting offers at this time to stay in Los Angeles and support Cromwell. Her final feature-film role was in 1990"s Awakenings, as the mother of a hospital patient played by Robert DeNiro.
As her career began to take off, she was compelled to put things on hold when her husband, the director John Cromwell, a leading Roosevelt Democrat in the film industry, was falsely accused of Communism by actor Adolphe Menjou in front of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings on Hollywood in 1951 and his career went on to be blacklisted.
Nelson made her New York City stage debut as a member of the theatre collective Group Theatre throughout its run from 1931 to 1941, receiving praise for the role of the chief striker"s wife in Clifford Odets" play Waiting for Lefty.