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Ellen Corby Best Movies
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Ellen Hansen Corby (June 3, 1911 โ April 14, 1999) was an American actress. She is best remembered for the role of Grandma Esther Walton on the CBS television series The Waltons, for which she won three Emmy Awards. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Aunt Trina in I Remember Mama.
Although she had bit parts in more than 30 films in the 1930s and 1940s, including Babes in Toyland (1934) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946), her first credited acting role was in RKO's Cornered (1945) in which she played a maid, followed by an uncredited brief speaking role as a kitchen cook in The Locket (1946). Corby began her career as a writer working on the Paramount Western Twilight on the Trail (1941).
She received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as a lovelorn aunt in I Remember Mama (1948). Over the next four decades, she worked in film and television, typically portraying maids, secretaries, waitresses, or gossips, often in Westerns, and had a recurring role as Henrietta Porter, a newspaper publisher, in Trackdown (1957โ1959), starring Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. In the episode entitled "The Vote", Henrietta Porter advocates for women's suffrage: "Women should have the right to vote. Women should be in politics. They can't do any worse than you men!" For her guest appearances in many Westerns, Corby in 1989 won a Golden Boot award.
Corby appeared as the elderly Mrs. Lesh, the crooked car peddler, on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show. She guest-starred, as well, on Wagon Train, Cheyenne, Bewitched, Dragnet (several episodes), Rescue 8, The Restless Gun (two episodes), The Rifleman, Fury, The Donna Reed Show, Frontier Circus, Hazel, I Love Lucy, Dennis the Menace, Tightrope, Bonanza, Meet McGraw, The Virginian, Channing, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Batman, Get Smart, Gomer Pyle, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies,The Invaders, and Night Gallery. From 1965 to 1967, she had a recurring role in the NBC television series Please Don't Eat the Daisies, based on an earlier Doris Day film.(Wikipedia)
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