AllMovie

There was always something calculating about Astrid Allwyn. "Scratch a chilly 'other woman' and if she were not Helen Vinson, she usually turned out to be Astrid Allwyn," as one commentator put it. Allwyn was certainly "chilly" toward little defenseless Shirley Temple when their paths crossed in both Dimples (1936) and Stowaway (1936) and you could hardly blame freshman senator James Stewart for running the other way when he encountered a slightly predatory Astrid in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Allwyn had made her stage bow in Elmer Rice's Street Scene back in 1929 and her screen debut three years later. She was busiest in the 1930s and retired in 1944 to raise her family with second husband Charles O. Fee, a brood that included future actresses Melinda O. Fee and Vicki Fee Steele. An earlier marriage, to screen actor Robert Kent, had ended in divorce in 1941.