Josephine Hull (January 3, 1886 - March 12,
1957) was an American actress who had a successful 50 year career on Broadway before bringing
some of her best roles to film.
Hull was born Josephine Sherwood in Newtonville, Massachusetts, and attended Radcliffe and The
New England Conservatory of Music. She made her stage debut in stock in 1905, and spent five
years as a chorus girl and touring stock before she married Shelley Hull in 1910. Her
husband died in 1919, and in 1923 Hull returned to show business under the name Josephine
Hull.
Hull was a stage success in Craig's Wife (1926), and in Daisy Mayme (1926), a role which was
written especially for her. Through the 1920s she continued working in the theater, and in
the 1930's had three Broadway hits in You Can't Take It With You (1936), Arsenic and Old Lace
(1941), and Harvey (1944).
Hull made a total of five films. She brought her two best stage roles to film in Arsenic and
Old Lace (1944) playing a homicidal aunt, and in Harvey (1950) as the batty sister of a man
who's friend is an invisible rabbit, for which she won the 1950 Oscar as Best Supporting
Actress.
Hull made one more film, The Lady from Texas (1951), and appeared in a TV version of Arsenic
and Old Lace in 1949, before retiring. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1957.
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