by Hal Erickson
biography
Character actress Martha Mattox had several solid years of theatrical work to her credit when she made her first film in 1915. Throughout the silent era, Mattox could be spotted playing everything from hillbilly housewives to Spanish duennas. In the 1920 adaptation of Huckleberry Finn, she was typecast as Miss Watson, while in 1927's Cat and the Canary, she was memorably sinister as shifty-eyed housekeeper Mammy Pleasant (a role she virtually reprised in the 1932 quickie The Monster Walks). Busy right up to her death in 1933, Martha Mattox made her final screen appearance in Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
