Blanche Yurka

{{Short description|American actress and director (1887–1974)}} {{Use American English|date=July 2020}} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2020}} {{Infobox person | name = Blanche Yurka | image = YURKA, BLANCH LCCN2016858196.jpg | image_size = | caption = Yurka in the 1940s | birth_name = Blanch Jurka | birth_date = {{Birth date|1887|06|19|mf=yes}} | birth_place = St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1974|06|06|1887|06|19|mf=yes}} | death_place = New York City, U.S. | resting_place = Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York City | known_for = {{hlist|A Tale of Two Cities|Electra|Troilus and Cressida|The Song of Bernadette|The Bridge of San Luis Rey}} | occupation = {{hlist|Actress|director}} | years_active = 1910–1967 | spouse = {{marriage|Ian Keith|1922|1926|end=div}} }}

'''Blanche Yurka''' (born '''Blanch Jurka'''; June 19, 1887 – June 6, 1974) was an American stage and film actress and director. She was an opera singer with minor roles at the Metropolitan Opera and later became a stage actress, making her Broadway debut in 1906 and established herself as a character actor of the classical stage, also appearing in several films of the 1930s and 1940s.

In addition to her many stage roles, which included Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore's ''Hamlet'', she was an occasional director and playwright. She remained active in theater and film until the late 1960s. Her most famous film role was Madame Defarge in MGM's version of ''A Tale of Two Cities'' (1935), but she was also the compassionate aunt in ''The Song of Bernadette'' (1943). Another memorable role was as Zachary Scott's widowed mother in ''The Southerner'' (1945).

==Early life== Born Blanch Jurka, purportedly in St. Paul, Minnesota, she was the third child (not including an older half-sister)<ref>{{Cite web |date=2 June 1900 |title=United States, Census, 1900 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M93X-1YQ |website=FamilySearch}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=10 April 1882 |title=Minnesota, County Marriages, 1853-1983 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Z5-9WBP |website=FamilySearch}}</ref> of Catholic Czech immigrants Karolína Anna Uher-Jurka (née Nováková),<ref>{{Cite web |title=New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2W17-SM9 |website=FamilySearch}}</ref> from Rychnov nad Kněžnou,<ref>{{Cite web |date=13 November 1848 |title=Czech Republic, Church Books, 1552-1981 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9S1-Z6S7?cat=olib%3A2425082&i=293&lang=en |website=FamilySearch}}</ref> and her second husband, Prof. Antonín Jurka, from Kralovice.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kralovice 11 {{!}} Porta fontium |url=https://www.portafontium.eu/iipimage/30064246/kralovice-11_0420-n?x=-164&y=396&w=921&h=394 |access-date=2025-09-23 |website=www.portafontium.eu}}</ref> Antonín was a teacher of Czech and German and a librarian who previously worked as an editor and led a Free Church.<ref>[http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/13/v13i03p269-276.pdf ANTONIN JURKA, A PIONEER CZECH SCHOOLMASTER IN MINNESOTA]; accessed April 1, 2015.</ref><ref>Filby, P. William, ed. (2012). ''Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s''. Gale Research.<!-- ISBN, page(s) needed --></ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=1878-04-13 |title=The Saint Paul Globe from Saint Paul, Minnesota |url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/85286104/ |access-date=2025-09-23 |website=Newspapers.com |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=1887-09-14 |title=Kvety Americke from Omaha, Nebraska |url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/764474924/ |access-date=2025-09-23 |website=Newspapers.com |language=en-US}}</ref> Jurka inherited her father's artistic and scholarly interests, including a love of music and acting. She finished grade school before her father lost his job teaching Czech at the Jefferson School in St. Paul. He found a new position with the Czech Benevolent Society in New York and moved the family to the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1900.<ref name=sicherman>{{cite book|last=Sicherman|first=Barbara|title=Notable American Women: The Modern Period: a Biographical Dictionary|publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press|year=1986|pages=[https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw00sich_0/page/754 754–56]|isbn=0674627334|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/notableamericanw00sich_0/page/754}}</ref>

Her parents used their modest income to provide Blanche with singing lessons in New York even before she entered high school (1901–03). Her vocal talent attracted the admiration of composer and singer Harry Burleigh,<ref name=yurkadiary>{{cite web|title=Blanche Yurka Diary|url=http://people.bu.edu/skocpol/Blanche/MyPrelude.html|accessdate=April 1, 2015}}</ref> and she won a scholarship at age 15 to study voice and ballet at the Metropolitan Opera School (1903–05). She appeared in an amateur Czech-language production of Michael William Balfe's ''The Bohemian Girl'' and made her Metropolitan Opera stage debut in the Christmas 1903 production of Wagner's ''Parsifal'' - the first staged performance of the opera outside of Bayreuth - appearing as a flower girl and as the Grail-bearer. In his review of the premiere performance, New York Tribune music critic Henry Krehbiel singled out her contribution: "And while pointing out the beauty of the work of the principals, it is a pleasant privilege to lay a wreath at the feet of the little lady who carried the Grail with such reverent and touching consecration to her sacred duties."<ref name= yurkadiary/>

She continued her studies at the Met Opera School but was dismissed when she injured her voice singing the role of Leonora in Verdi's ''Il Trovatore'' in an amateur production.<ref name= yurkadiary/> She transferred to the Institute for Musical Art (1905–07), forerunner of the Juilliard School but was dismissed from there for the same reason. Having lost her chance at an operatic career, she took the Institute director's suggestion and tried for a career on the theater stage.<ref name=sicherman/> Through persistence, she managed to get an audition with the theater impresario David Belasco. According to her autobiography, he said to her: "Your diction is clear and pure. Your voice has good timbre. I can sense that you have temperament. We must find out if you can act."<ref>Yurka, Blanche (1970). ''Bohemian Girl: Blanche Yurka's Theatrical Life''. Ohio University Press, p. 37; {{ISBN|8214007119}}.</ref> He gave her a bit part in ''The Rose of the Rancho'' (1906), and the following year, he extended her a contract, at which time she changed her surname to "Yurka", a homophone of her true surname.<ref name=sicherman/>

==Stage career== {{Moresources|section|date=July 2023}} Beginning with ''The Warrens of Virginia'' (1907), Blanche spent the next decade alternating between stock and touring productions. In 1909, she had a small part in Leo Ditrichstein's ''Is Matrimony a Failure?'' at the Belasco Theater. There, she met actress Jane Cowl, who was starring in the production as Fanny Perry. Yurka had minor roles in several plays, including ''An Old New Yorker'' (1911), ''The House of Bondage'' (1914) ''Our American Cousin'' (1915) and a pair of plays by Jane Cowl, ''Daybreak'' (1917) and ''Information Please'' (1918).<ref name=yurkaibdb>{{IBDB name|4556}}</ref>

In 1922-23, she was Queen Gertrude to John Barrymore's Hamlet in Arthur Hopkins' production of ''Hamlet'' at the Sam Harris Theater and Manhattan Opera House, where it ran for a combined 125 performances.<ref name=yurkaibdb/> At 42, Barrymore was a little old to be playing her son (she was 35), and she made herself appear as youthful as possible to vent her irritation.<ref name=sicherman/>

Prior to ''Hamlet,'' she appeared in ''The Law Breaker'', where she met a charming young character actor named Ian Keith (née Keith Ross), who was 12 years her junior. They married in September 1922, her only marriage and his second. Her growing stature as an actress - combined with his jealousy - eventually came between them; they separated in 1925 and divorced in 1926.<ref name=sicherman/> Yurka never remarried and had no children.

Building on her repertoire of classic characters, Yurka starred in a quartet of Ibsen plays, directing three of them: ''The Wild Duck'' (1928, as Gina Ekdal), ''Hedda Gabler'' (1929, title role) and ''The Vikings'' (1930, as Hjordis); she also had the title role of Ellida in ''The Lady from the Sea'' (1929).<ref name=yurkaibdb/>

In the year 1932 alone, she played the title role in Sophocles' ''Electra'', was Helen of Troy in Shakespeare's ''Troilus and Cressida'', directed ''Carry Nation'' starring Esther Dale (a production that featured the Broadway debuts of Mildred Natwick and James Stewart) and appeared in Katharine Cornell's production of ''Lucrece'' by Deems Taylor and Thornton Wilder.<ref name=yurkaibdb/> She won critical acclaim in 1935 when she replaced Edith Evans as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet opposite Cornell's Juliet.

She co-adapted to stage the Spanish comedy, ''Spring in Autumn'' (1933) by Gregorio Martínez Sierra and María Martínez Sierra, which reunited her with ''Carry Nation'' co-stars Esther Dale, Mildred Natwick, and James Stewart, and featured Yurka singing a Puccini aria while standing on her head.<ref>Davis, Andrew (2010). ''America's Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre''. Penn State University Press, p. 229; {{ISBN|978-0-271-03578-9}}</ref>

==Film career== Yurka was foremost a stage actress and for a long time considered film-making an inferior art form. Her low opinion of the movies started to change when she saw John Ford's ''The Informer'', adapted from the novel by Liam O'Flaherty. When she finally made her belated screen debut at the age of 47, it was in the role that many consider the greatest of her film career, the poisonously vindictive revolutionary Thérèse Defarge in ''A Tale of Two Cities''. Producer David O. Selznick's first choice for the part of Madame Defarge was the Russian-born stage actress Alla Nazimova, who turned it down but recommended Yurka, declaring her the "only" actress for the part. The two women hadn't yet met but were well acquainted with one another's work inasmuch as they were the leading Ibsen heroines on the Broadway stage. Despite Nazimova's endorsement, Yurka was the 67th actor tested for the role.<ref name=yurkaimdb>{{IMDb name|0951063}}</ref>

Yurka threw herself into the part – quite literally. Her final fight scene with Edna May Oliver (who was only four years older than Yurka) showed the two actresses tumbling over tables and over the floor, offering a hint of Yurka's onstage physicality. Although not nominated for a best supporting actress Academy Award (the supporting categories weren't established until the following year), her character portrayal was a model of a sinister screen villain. In close-up, she flashed a look of steely malevolence; in her speech to the revolutionary tribunal – asking for the conviction and execution of Charles Darnay – she played it large and to the rafters. The film was only nominated in the Best Film and Best Editing categories, not even its star, Ronald Colman getting an Oscar nod.{{citation needed|date=April 2015}}

She sought to play O-Lan in the 1937 film ''The Good Earth'' but lost out to Luise Rainer, who won an Academy Award for her performance. She also lost the role of Pilar in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' to Greek actress Katina Paxinou, who went on to win an Oscar for best supporting actress.<ref name=yurkaimdb/>

Her follow-up to ''A Tale of Two Cities'' was the lead in a B movie shoot-'em-up, ''Queen of the Mob'' (1940), in which Yurka played a gangster matriarch closely based on the contemporary outlaw, Ma Barker. Her severe, vaguely imperious looks led to her casting in a rogue's gallery of austere or villainous parts. Through the 1940s and with decreasing frequency in the 1950s, she appeared in a succession of B parts that wasted her talents, occasionally landing supporting character parts in A list movies. Among the latter were ''The Song of Bernadette'' (1943) – again for David O. Selznick – in which she played Jennifer Jones' aunt and ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' (1944), as the Abbess of San Luis Rey chapel. Notably, one of her co-stars in the latter film was Alla Nazimova (who had suggested Yurka's casting as Madame Defarge) playing the Marquessa Doña Maria. In ''The Southerner'' (1945), an American frontier drama directed by Jean Renoir, Yurka's Mama Tucker was the widowed daughter-in-law of cantankerous Granny Tucker played by Beulah Bondi.<ref name=yurkaimdb/>

==Radio career== Yurka had the role of Mrs. Hunter in the soap opera ''Valiant Lady''.<ref>{{cite news|title=Related by Radio|newspaper=Harrisburg Telegraph |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3275027/harrisburg_telegraph/|agency=Harrisburg Telegraph|date=February 2, 1946|page=17|via = Newspapers.com|accessdate = September 22, 2015}} {{Open access}}</ref>

==Post-War years== Yurka never left the theater, but as her Hollywood roles became less satisfying after the war, the pace of both her film and stage roles fell off. During World War II, she contributed her time and talent to the war effort as a theater performer. She toured with theater troupes in Europe both before and after the war.<ref name=sicherman/> In December, 1945, she appeared at the Majestic Theatre for two readings of Sophocles' ''Oedipus Rex'' with classics scholar Eugene O'Neill, Jr.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o6owDwAAQBAJ&q=%22blanche+yurka%22+majestic+theater&pg=PA267|title=Reimagining Greek Tragedy on the American Stage|last=Foley|first=Helene P.|author-link=Helene P. Foley |date=2014-06-26|publisher=Univ of California Press|isbn=9780520283879|language=en}}</ref>

Yurka was active in theater causes all her life. She supported the 1919 actors' strike. She later vigorously defended the interests of American actors against a British invasion of American theaters. She aligned herself with Tallulah Bankhead's defense of the Federal Theater Project at the 1939 Senate Appropriations Committee hearings that de-funded the program in reaction to productions that were deemed sympathetic to the political left-wing.<ref name=sicherman/>

On occasion, she could be critical of Broadway for production values which did not live up to the highest standards. In a letter to the New York Times, published November 6, 1955, she reproached the theater community's "passion for ugliness that seems so much a part of our theater today."<ref name=sicherman/> Before the year was over, she announced her retirement from the stage – a short-lived retirement that would find her back onstage exactly a year later in the Phoenix Theatre's ''Diary of a Scoundrel''. In 1957, she visited Athens under the aegis of the United States International Exchange of Artists to open the Greek Drama Festival. There, she appeared in a reading of Aeschylus' ''Prometheus Bound'' in the translation by Edith Hamilton.<ref name=sicherman/> In 1958, she appeared at the Belasco Theater in Huntington Hartford's ''Jane Eyre''.<ref name=yurkaibdb/>

In the last 15 years of her life, few stage or film roles came her way. She appeared sporadically in television shows in the '50s, notably, Lux Video Theater, The Philip Morris Playhouse and Ponds Theater. She was shocked at being offered the brief role of Mrs. Wendell the cook in the cancelled MGM remake of ''Dinner at Eight'' (1969)<ref name=sicherman/><ref name=yurkaibdb/> – the role played by May Robson in the 1933 film. She concluded her career on a note of personal triumph with her critically acclaimed London performance as ''The Madwoman of Chaillot'' (1969).<ref name=yurkaibdb/> When the play traveled to off-Broadway in 1970, the New York critics' reception was lukewarm, and Yurka retired from acting soon after the show closed.<ref name=sicherman/>

==Death== thumb|left|180px|Grave of Blanche Yurka Yurka collected her thoughts about acting technique in the book ''Dear Audience'' (1959) and wrote a memoir, ''Bohemian Girl'' (1970). She was a popular guest at women's clubs and colleges, where she continued to perform dramatic readings.{{citation needed|date=July 2015}}<ref>{{Cite news|last=Fund|first=Sykes|date=February 28, 1940|title=The Ballad of Blanche Yurka Or "Comedy Through The Ages"|page=1|work=Connecticut College News|url=https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1013&context=ccnews_1939_1940|access-date=February 7, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|date=March 15, 1940|title=Blanche Yurka Speaks Before Capacity Crowd|volume=30|page=1|work=The New Hampshire|issue=37|url=https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2237&context=tnh_archive|access-date=February 4, 2022}}</ref> She suffered from failing health in her final years owing to arteriosclerosis and died June 6, 1974, at age 86. She was interred in the same burial plot with her good friend, actress Florence Reed, in the Actors Fund of America section of Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.

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==Selected filmography== * ''A Tale of Two Cities'' (1935) as Madame Thérèse Defarge * ''Queen of the Mob'' (1940) as Ma Webster * ''Escape'' (1940) as Nurse * ''City for Conquest'' (1940) as Mrs. Nash * ''Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring'' (1941) as Mrs. Augusta Stack * ''Pacific Rendezvous'' (1942) as Mrs. Savarina * ''Lady for a Night'' (1942) as Julia Alderson * ''Keeper of the Flame'' (1942) as Mrs. Anna Taylor * ''A Night to Remember'' (1942) as Mrs. Salter * ''The Song of Bernadette'' (1943) as Aunt Bernarde Casterot * ''Tonight We Raid Calais'' (1943) as Widow Grelieu * ''Cry of the Werewolf'' (1944) as Bianca * ''One Body Too Many'' (1944) as Matthews * ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' (1944) as The Abbess * ''The Southerner'' (1945) as Mama Tucker * ''The Flame'' (1947) as Aunt Margaret * ''13 Rue Madeleine'' (1947) as Madame Thillot * ''The Furies'' (1950) as Herrera's Mother * ''At Sword's Point'' (1952) as Madame Michom * ''Taxi'' (1953) as Mrs. Nielson * ''Thunder in the Sun'' (1959) as Louise Dauphin

==References== {{Reflist}}

==Further reading== * {{cite book |last= Maltin |first= Leonard |title= The Real Stars : Profiles and Interviews of Hollywood's Unsung Featured Players |chapter= Blanche Yurka |pages= 278–287 |date= 2015 |edition= Sixth / eBook |orig-year=First published 1969 |type= softcover |publisher= CreateSpace Independent |location= Great Britain |isbn = 978-1-5116-4485-3}}

==External links== {{Commons category|Blanche Yurka}} {{Portal|Biography}} *{{IMDb name|0951063}} * [http://people.bu.edu/skocpol/Blanche/MyPrelude.html Blanche Yurka diary] *[https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=blanche+yurka Blanche Yurka portraits](NY Public Library, Billy Rose collection) *[https://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=18907 Aveleyman]Blanche Yurka *[https://www.kinotv.com/page/bio.php?namecode=113808&q=0&l=en Kinotv]|Blanche Yurka

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yurka, Blanche}} Category:1887 births Category:1974 deaths Category:American people of Czech descent Category:20th-century American actresses Category:American film actresses Category:American opera singers Category:American stage actresses Category:Actresses from Saint Paul, Minnesota Category:Singers from Minnesota Category:Deaths from arteriosclerosis Category:Burials at Kensico Cemetery Category:20th-century American singers Category:Classical musicians from Minnesota