Cora Witherspoon

Who was Cora Witherspoon?

Cora Witherspoon was an American stage and film character actress whose career spanned nearly half a century. She began in theatre where she would remain rooted even after entering motion pictures in the early 1930s. As Witherspoon’s career progressed she carved out a niche playing haughty society women or harridan housewives such as Princess Lina in Ferenc Molnár's 1928 play, Olympia, or Agatha Sousè, W. C. Fields’ domineering spouse in the 1940 film, The Bank Dick. John Springer and Jack Hamilton, authors of They Had Faces Then: Super Stars, Stars, and Starlets of the 1930's, wrote that "Witherspoon was blessed with a face that might have been drawn by one of those cartoonists who specialize in dealing with the war between men and women."