Spring Byington
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Spring Byington (October 17, 1886 – September 7, 1971) was an Oscar-nominated American actress.
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[edit] Early life
She was born Spring Dell Byington in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She had one younger sister, Helene Kimball Byington, born September 4, 1890 in Colorado. Their father was Prof. Edwin Lee Byington (1852–1891), a well respected educator and superintendent of schools in Colorado. When he died unexpectedly, his wife (Helene Maud Cleghorn Byington) decided to send their daughters to live with her parents, Arthur and Charlotte Cleghorn, in Port Hope, Ontario. While there, Mrs. Byington moved to Boston and became a student at the Boston University School of Medicine where she graduated in 1896. Upon graduation she moved back to Denver, Colorado and began a practice with fellow graduate Dr. Mary Ford.
Spring graduated from North High School in 1904, and shortly afterward began working with the Elitch Garden Stock Company. Her mother had been a friend of Mrs. Elitch. When Dr. Byington died in 1907, Spring and her sister were legally adopted by their aunt Margaret, wife of Rice Eugene Eddy. However, Spring was already of legal age and took her inheritance to begin an acting career in New York.
[edit] Early Career and Marriage
In 1908, the 22 year old actress had found a place with an acting company organized by J. Wallace Erskine. Little is known of the details of this company, but they can be found on the ship manifest of the S. S. Byron which sailed from Santos, Brazil on December 2 and arrived in Manhattan, New York just before Christmas on December 23. She made the trip to Brazil again the following year and returned on the S. S. Byron again on October 22, 1909, this time as Spring Chandler, wife of Roy Chandler, a stage director on Broadway. Roy Chandler was educated at Ossining Academy in New York and divided his holidays between Worchester, Massachusetts and his home town of East Corinth, Maine. He made fantastic claims which have not been confirmed but included such accomplishments as having being an impersonator of Isadora Duncan, having installed air-conditioning into the palace of the King of Siam and of having internationalized Air-Wick. Whichever parts of his extraordinary life are true, none of them had much to do with Spring. The couple divorced after about ten years of marriage, but not before having two daughters, Phyllis (born 1916) and Lois (born approx. 1918).
[edit] Broadway
Upon returning to New York, Spring divided her time between working in Manhattan and staying with her daughters whom she had placed to live with friends J. Allen and Lois Bobcock in Leonardsville Village, New York (Madison County). She began touring in 1919 with a production of "Birds in Paradise" which brought the Hawaiian culture to the mainland, and in 1921 began work with the Stuart Walker Company for which she played roles in "My Pim Passes By", "The Ruined Lady" and "Rollo's Wild Oats" among others. This connection landed her a role in her first Broadway performance in 1924, George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's Beggar on Horseback which ran for six months. She renewed the role in March and April 1925 and continued on Broadway with an additional 18 productions in ten years from 1925 to 1935. These included roles in Kaufman and Moss Hart's Once in a Lifetime, Rachel Crothers's When Ladies Meet and Dawn Powell's Jig Saw.
[edit] Hollywood
In her last years of Broadway she began work in films. The first was a short film titled "Papa's Slay Ride" in 1931 and the second, and most famous, was "Little Women" in 1933 as "Marmee" with Katherine Hepburn as her daughter "Jo". She became a household name during "The Jones Family" series of films and continued as a character actress in Hollywood for several years.
Other films included Mutiny on the Bounty, Way Down East, Dodsworth, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, The Devil and Miss Jones, Meet John Doe, Roxie Hart, Heaven Can Wait, I'll Be Seeing You, The Enchanted Cottage and In the Good Old Summertime. In 1938, Byington was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for You Can't Take it With You, losing to Fay Bainter for Jezebel, in which Byington played antebellum society matron Mrs Kendrick.
During World War II she worked in radio and decided to return when her film career began to dwindle after the war. In 1952 she joined CBS Radio to become the lead in the sit-com December Bride. In 1954 Desilu Productions produced a pilot of the show for a television sit-com, also starring Spring. The pilot was successful and the new hit sit-com played every night immediately after "I Love Lucy". It lasted until 1959. From 1961 – 1963, she appeared in the Western series Laramie. Her last role before her death from cancer was as Larry Hagman's mother on I Dream of Jeannie, but she died during the run of the series.
Byington has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 6507 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 6233 Hollywood Blvd. Byington's photo was used as the photo for Mildred Potter, wife of Colonel Potter, on the American television show "M.A.S.H."Actor Harry Morgan, who portrayed Colonel Potter, had previously co-starred with Spring Byington in December Bride as neighbor Pete Porter. His later show,Pete and Gladys was a spin-off of December Bride.
[edit] Personal life
Spring Byington was an extremely intelligent and energetic woman her entire life. She spoke Spanish fluently which she learned during a great deal of time spent with her husband in Buenos Aires and also learned Brazilian Portuguese in her golden years. In July 1958 she confided to reporter Hazel Johnson (a UPI Hollywood Correspondent) that she had acquired a "small coffee plantation" in Brazil the month before and was learning Portuguese. "Miss Byington explained that she first listens to a 'conditioning record' before she goes to sleep. An hour later her Portuguese lessons automatically begin feeding into her pillow by means of a small speaker." She was also fascinated by science fiction novels and preferred books such as George Orwell's 1984 and is noted to have surprised her costars of December Bride with knowledge of the earth's satellites and constellations in the night sky. She also donated her body to medical science upon her death.
In August 1955 she began taking flying lessons in Glendale, California. In another interview given to Margaret McManes in September 1955 she stated that she didn't care for sewing, gardens only sketchily, and declared cooking is "for those who know how. I'll never solve broccoli." This tom-boyish personality helps to validate the claims made by Boze Hadleigh that Spring was a lesbian which was published in his book Hollywood Lesbians (1996). Boze notes in his published interview with character actress Marjorie Main, who insinuated the possibility of Spring's lesbianism - "... it's true that Spring never had any use for men." Another reference to her relationship with Main is given by author Darwin Porter in his biography of Katherine Hepburn "Katherine the Great", published in 2004. In this Darwin write:
"In the second week of the shoot, Byington asked Kate if, "I can bring a special and dear friend to your picnic?" Kate gladly extended an invitation, and the next day Byington turned up on the set with actress Marjorie Main. After the first two minutes of watching the two women together, Kate concluded that Laura had been wrong about Byington. She indeed was a lesbian, and made it rather clear that she and Main were locked into a torrid affair."
Other than these two publication, there are no other known points of evidence to suggest Spring's homosexuality. Several internet websites also suggest that she may have been linked to actresses Maude Adams and Beulah Bondi, but no evidence of these relationships have been published as of yet.
