Norma Varden
In Episode #13- The Thirteenth hat, A high society woman, Mrs Monteagle, went to a hat salon to try on a few. Little did she know that The Mad Hatter would also show up! She had to give a description to Batman and Robin and aid them to capture the Hatter.


Mrs
Mongagle was played by Norma Varden. She was a pretty incredible
woman al in all. She was born January 20 1898 in London,England. By
the age of 9 she
was
an accomplished pianist, giving concerts up until she was in her
teens were she decided acting was the way for her to go. She always
has a mature look so even while young, she was cast as an older
woman. Bored with dramatic assignments, Varden gave comedy a try at
the famous Aldwych Theatre, where from 1929 through 1933 she was
resident character comedienne in the theatre's well-received marital
farces. After her talkie debut in the Aldwych comedy A Night Like
This (1930), she remained busy on the British film scene for over a
decade. Moving to Hollywood in 1941, she found that the typecasting
system frequently precluded large roles: Though she was well served
as Robert Benchley's wife in
The
Major and the Minor (1942), for example, her next assignment was the
unbilled role of a pickpocket victim's wife in Casablanca (1942). Her
work encompassed radio as well as films for the rest of the decade;
in nearly all her
assignments
Norma played a haughty British or New York aristocrat who looked
down with disdain at the "commoners." By the '50s, she was
enjoying such sizeable parts as the society lady who is nearly
strangled by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), the
bejeweled wife of "sugar daddy" Charles Coburn in Gentlemen
Prefer
Blondes
(1953), and George Sanders' dragonlike mother in Jupiter's Darling
(1955). Norma Varden's greatest film role might have been as the
mother superior in The Sound of Music (1965), but the
producers
decided to go with Peggy Wood, consigning Varden to the small but
showy part of Frau Schmidt, the Von Trapps' housekeeper. After
countless television and film assignments, Norma Varden retired in
1972, spending most of her time thereafter as a spokesperson for the
Screen Actors Guild, battling for better medical benefits for older
actors. -- Hal Erickson, All-Movie Guide
She passed away in California, 1989.
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