Zeffie Tilbury

Born: 1863-11-18

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Zeffie Agnes Lydia Tilbury (November 20, 1863 – July 24, 1950) was an English actress. Tilbury was known first on the London stage and on Broadway in New York City. In 1881, she debuted on stage in Nine Points of the Law at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, England. She is today best known for playing wise or evil older characters in films, such as the distinguished lady gambler at dinner with Garbo in The Single Standard, as the pitiful Grandma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and Grandma Lester in Tobacco Road. She appeared in over 70 films. Her earliest surviving silent film is the Valentino / Nazimova 1921 production of Camille. Tilbury is probably best remembered as the old lady who is befriended by Spanky and his friends on her birthday and, as a result, is transformed from a lonely, disagreeable recluse to a happy and loving carefree soul in the 1936 Hal Roach Our Gang comedy Second Childhood. In the same year she also portrayed the Gypsy Queen in the Laurel and Hardy film The Bohemian Girl. Tilbury was married twice. First to Arthur Frederick Lewis in June, 1887, and later to L. E. Woodthorpe, who died on April 8, 1915. She died in Los Angeles, California in 1950 at the age of 86.


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The Grapes of Wrath

as Grandma Joad
Released: 1940-03-15

Tom Joad returns to his home after a jail sentence to find his family kicked out of their farm...

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Werewolf of London

as Mrs. Moncaster
Released: 1935-05-13

A strange animal attack turns a botanist into a bloodthirsty monster.

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Marie Antoinette

as Dowager at Birth of Dauphin (uncredited)
Released: 1938-08-26

The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of...

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After the Thin Man

as Aunt Lucy (uncredited)
Released: 1936-12-25

Nick and Nora Charles investigate when Nora's cousin reports her disreputable husband is...

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Tobacco Road

as Grandma Lester
Released: 1941-02-20

Shiftless Jeeter Lester and his family of sharecroppers live in rural Georgia where their...

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Public Hero Number 1

as Deaf Woman in Scottsdale Bar (uncredited)
Released: 1935-05-31

G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums...

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Kidnapped

as Old Woman
Released: 1938-05-27

Robert Louis Stevenson's hero David Balfour joins rebel Alan Breck Stewart in 18th-century...

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Balalaika

as Natalya Petrovna
Released: 1939-12-15

A Russian prince disguised as a worker and a cafe singer secretly involved in revolutionary...

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Desire

as Aunt Olga
Released: 1936-04-11

Madeleine steals a string of pearls in Paris and uses American engineer Tom, who is driving on...

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Midnight Taxi

as Mrs. Lane
Released: 1937-04-04

A federal agent goes to work for a taxi company believing it to be a front for a gang of...

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Alice Adams

as Mrs. Dresser (uncredited)
Released: 1935-08-23

In the lower-middle-class Adams family, father and son are happy to work in a drugstore, but...

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The White Angel

as Woman Donating Sheets (uncredited)
Released: 1936-06-25

In mid-nineteenth century England the medical establishment does not recognize the value of...

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Hideaway

as Mrs. Beamish
Released: 1937-08-13

A poor family receives unwanted houseguests when they're visited by gangsters looking for a...

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Camille

as Prudence
Released: 1921-09-26

Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand...

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The Last Days of Pompeii

as The Wise Woman (uncredited)
Released: 1935-10-18

In this action-filled spectacle set in ancient Pompeii, a blacksmith becomes a Roman gladiator,...

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Bulldog Drummond's Peril

as Mrs. Weevens
Released: 1938-03-18

Drummond's wedding with Phyllis is interrupted when the inspector guarding their gifts is...

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Mystery Liner

as Granny Plimpton
Released: 1934-03-15

Police try to solve a murder on board an ocean liner.

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Give Me Your Heart

as Esther Warren
Released: 1936-09-17

An American lawyer's wife is reunited with her child and his father, an English nobleman.

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Bachelor Bait

as Miss Turner (uncredited)
Released: 1934-07-27

After being fired from his job at the Marriage License Bureau, a clerk turns to matchmaking.

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Emergency Squad

as Mrs. Cobb
Released: 1940-01-05

Betty Bryant is an ambitious newspaper reporter in love with Dan Barton, a member of a big-city...

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The Earl of Chicago

as Miss Nana (uncredited)
Released: 1940-01-05

A behind the times Chicago bootlegger goes to England with his lawyer to claim his estate as the...

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Tell No Tales

as Miss Mary
Released: 1939-06-12

A newspaper editor turns a kidnapping into the banner headlines and exclusive story that could...

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The Story of Alexander Graham Bell

as Mrs. Sanders
Released: 1939-04-04

Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and...

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The Gorgeous Hussy

as Mrs. Daniel Beall
Released: 1936-08-28

It's the early nineteenth century Washington. Young adult Margaret O'Neal, Peggy to most that...

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It Happened in Hollywood

as Miss Gordon
Released: 1937-09-07

A silent Western star has trouble adjusting to the coming of sound.

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Bulldog Drummond Escapes

as Drunk in Jail Cell
Released: 1937-01-22

Drummond manages to save a woman from jumping in front of his car but she runs away with his...

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Navy Wife

as Bridge Player
Released: 1935-09-17

A Hawaiian naval nurse weds a widowed officer partly because he has a crippled daughter.

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood

as The Opium Woman
Released: 1935-02-04

A choirmaster addicted to opium and obsessed with a beautiful young woman will stop at nothing...

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Lady of the Tropics

as Woman Congratulating Manon
Released: 1939-08-11

Playboy Bill Carey woos a half-caste beauty in French Indochina, but her second-class legal...

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Two Alone

as Rogers' Neighbor (uncredited)
Released: 1934-01-26

Mazie, a poor orphan girl, is mistreated by cruel farmer Slag and his wife for whom she works....

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Stranded

as Old Hag (uncredited)
Released: 1935-06-29

A Traveler's Aid worker who delights in solving people's problems gets mixed up with gangsters.

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Rhythm in the Clouds

as The Duchess de Lovely
Released: 1937-06-21

Judy Walker is a poor songwriter who, through mistaken identity, gets her songs played on the radio.

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The Single Standard

as Mrs. Handley
Released: 1929-07-27

A bored socialite finds fleeting romance with an artist.

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Bulldog Drummond Comes Back

as Zeffie
Released: 1937-09-24

Drummond's girlfriend is kidnapped by his enemies and he along with his friend Nielsen, an...

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Women Must Dress

as Peg Martin
Released: 1935-02-01

A divorced woman finds success as a fashion designer.

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Arrest Bulldog Drummond

as Aunt Meg
Released: 1938-11-25

The invention of a machine that can cause remote explosions brings the attention of Scotland...

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The Ship from Shanghai

as Lady Daley
Released: 1930-01-31

On a yacht sailing from Shanghai to the United States, the sailors, led by the megalomaniac...

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Under Cover of Night

as Mrs. Nash
Released: 1937-01-08

A detective (Edmund Lowe) trails a professor (Henry Daniell) who stole credit for his wife's...

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Federal Bullets

as Mrs. Crippen
Released: 1937-10-29

Federal Bullets is a leisurely paced Monogram crime melodrama with not a few clever plot twists....

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Boy Trouble

as Mrs. Jepson
Released: 1939-01-27

A fussy shopkeeper's life drastically changes when his wife takes in two homeless boys.

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Woman Against Woman

as Grandma
Released: 1938-06-24

A newlywed unhappily discovers that her husband's scheming ex-wife still has a controlling...

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Maid of Salem

as Goody Hodgers
Released: 1937-02-12

When a young woman named Barbara Clarke has an affair with adventurer Roger Coverman, it causes...

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She Couldn't Say No

as Ma Hawkins
Released: 1940-12-07

Two big city lawyers are handed an important case but then find it requires them to deal with...

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Sheriff of Tombstone

as Granny Carson
Released: 1941-05-07

The mayor has sent for a gunslinger who, though appearing to clean up the town, is really to be...

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Charlie Chan Carries On

as Mrs. Luce
Released: 1931-04-11

Charlie steps in to solve the murder of a wealthy American found dead in a London hotel....

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A Society Exile

as Mrs. Stanley Shelby
Released: 1919-10-07

Nora Shard, a young American girl living in England, is ostracized from society for her presumed...

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The King Without a Crown

as Dying Duchess Marie (uncredited)
Released: 1937-10-09

This short explores the possibility that Louis XVII, son of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,...

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Mothers of Men

as Mrs. De La Motte
Released: 1920-03-10

Young Austrian girl Marie Helmar, is left penniless by the death of her father and disgraced by...

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The Avalanche

as Mrs. Ruyler
Released: 1919-06-29

A woman with a gambling addiction finds that her daughter is threatened by the same tendencies.

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Vamp Till Ready

as Woman
Released: 1936-03-28

Charley's somewhat prudish wife pretends to be a party girl.

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