After training for the stage at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in her early 20s she began playing leads on Broadway. After three decades of stage experience she moved to Hollywood in 1934, the year of the death of her husband, playwright Louis Shipman. For a decade or so she was busy onscreen in character roles, usually playing blue-blooded, snobby matrons. For her work in Watch on the Rhine (1943) she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomiination.