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British stage actress Emily Fitzroy had two decades' experience behind her when she first appeared on screen in the 1916 version of East Lynne. Specializing in fussy, spinsterish roles, Fitzroy was prominently featured in several American productions of the 1920s, notably as Maria Poole in Griffith's Way Down East and reclusive mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder in The Bat (1926). Her first talkie appearance was as Parthy Hawkes, the highly judgmental mother of heroine Magnolia Hawkes (Laura La Plante), in the 1929 version of Show Boat. She occasionally returned to England in the 1930s, playing such roles as Mrs. Sancho Panza in the multilingual production Don Quixote (1933). Emily Fitzroy made her last screen appearance in Forever and a Day (1943), a wartime morale-booster that called upon the talents of virtually every English-born actor in Hollywood.