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.

Norma trying on a hat in BatmanNorma shaken up by the Mad 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 Norma giving a lead to Batman and Robin !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 Norma in Casablanca 1942The 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 Norma in Les Misrables 1952assignments 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 Norma in  The Buccaneer 1958Blondes (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 Norma in Sound of Musicproducers 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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