The screen immortality of Clara Blanchard Dickey (1876-1962) rests on her role as Dorothy’s Auntie Em in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Playing aunts was something of a speciality: she was Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly in three different pictures, and Esther Blodgett’s Aunt Mattie in A Star is Born (1937), amongst many others.
Blandick made her stage debut in Boston at the age of 21, and made her first Broadway appearance in 1903, in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman. She continued to work on Broadway and in touring productions.
Some sources claim she made her first film in 1908, but the earliest appearance identified by the AFI is Mrs Black is Back (19140, an adaptation of a Broadway hit made by Famous Players.
Blandick was part of the 1929 exodus to Hollywood, where she worked as a character actor until the early fifties, sometimes credited, sometimes not, and well over 100 pictures in total. She played the snooty mother in Shopworn (1932) and was uncredited in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932). Blandick was credited again in Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and DeMille’s North West Mounted Police (1940), and uncredited in Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943).
As well as The Wizard of Oz, Blandick appeared without credit in three other MGM musicals: Going Hollywood, The Big Store and Du Barry was a Lady.
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