Ilka Chase on AllMovie

A stage actress from the mid-'20s, Ilka Chase made her initial film appearance in 1929's Why Leave Home? Though she continued to turn in excellent work as a character actress well into the 1940s -- her best performance was arguably as the waspish Lisa Vale in Now Voyager (1942) --Chase's true fame rested in her prolific output as a newspaper columnist. Many of her journalistic reminiscences were gathered together in a brace of books, such as Past Imperfect (1945) and Free Admission (1948). She made a handful of film appearances in the 1950s, most memorably as a Hedda Hopper type in The Big Knife (1955), and devoted most of her energies to television, where she hosted several talk shows and guested on such quizzers as Masquerade Party. Her last major TV work was as Peter Falk's former mother-in-law in the 1965 legal series Trials of O'Brien. She died at the age of 72, from injuries sustained in a fall. Married three times, Ilka Chase's first husband was actor Louis Calhern.