Cutting her theatrical teeth in regional stock, American actress Nana Bryant appeared steadily on Broadway from 1925 thrugh 1935. Her forte during this period was musical-comedy character work, a field she still cultivated in the 1940s with Song of Norway. Bryant's first film was 1935's Guard That Girl; for the next twenty years she appeared mainly in benign, understanding roles, as typified by her last movie assignment as a kindly Mother Superior in The Private War of Major Benson (1955). That same year, Bryant had a six-month run as Mrs. Nestor, owner of a private school, on the popular TV sitcom Our Miss Brooks. So firmly associated was Bryant in motherly roles that she quite took the audience's breath away when playing a nasty character. Even Nana Bryant's daughter-in-law, who knew the real woman as well as anyone, could not bear watching Bryant portray a steely-eyed murderer in the Roy Rogers western Eyes of Texas (1949).
by Hal Erickson
biography
