Harriet Elizabeth MacGibbonUnited Press (September 3, 1930). "Pair Given Waiver to Go On with Wedding". Camden Courier-Post. p. 9. Retrieved July 2, 2023."Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificates, 1871-1949", database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q239-ZR6N : 5 October 2022), Harriet Elizabeth MacGibbon, 1943. (October 5, 1905 – February 8, 1987) was an American film, stage and television actress best known for her role as the insufferably snobbish, "blue-blooded Bostonian" Mrs. Margaret Drysdale in the sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies.
Career MacGibbon joined the stock company of Edward Clarke Lilley at Akron, Ohio. She then went to San Francisco and played leading roles for Henry Duffy. In Louisville, Kentucky, she acted with Wilton Lackaye, Edmund Breese, William Faversham, Tom Wise and Nance O'Neil. Credits included Ned McCobb's Daughter, The Front Page, and a "transcontinental tour" of Max Marcin's The Big Fight (in which she starred opposite former world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey), beginning in Boston, taking in New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, and ending at Caine's storehouse in Los Angeles.
She had a long and distinguished career on the Broadway stage, beginning in 1925 at the age of 19 when she acted in the play Beggar on Horseback at the Shubert Theatre. In the late 1930s, she did You Can't Take It With You, the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, at the Biltmore Theatre in Los Angeles. From 1934 to 1937, MacGibbon portrayed Lucy Kent on the NBC radio soap opera Home Sweet Home.
Her film debut was a non-speaking bit as a snooty woman walking a dog across a golf course in W.C. Fields' The Golf Specialist (1930), shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey.The Golf Specialist (1930) on YouTube She made numerous guest appearances on television starting in 1950, including Bewitched, Ray Milland's sitcom Meet Mr. McNutley. Another sitcom in which MacGibbon appeared was My Three Sons, performing as Margaret Cunningham in the 1961 episode "Bub Goes to School". She was cast in five theatrical movies, including Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), which was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, and Lee J. Cobb.
Personal life and death MacGibbon married at least twice: in September 1930 to producer William Reno Kane of Philadelphia,Brustein, Louis (September 7, 1930). "Prelate Halts Wedding; Actress in Role of Bride". New York Daily News. p. 3. Retrieved July 2, 2023. from whom she obtained a divorce in April 1942,"Actions Filed". Nevada State Journal. April 14, 1942. p. 9. Retrieved July 2, 2023."Decrees Granted". Nevada State Journal. April 25, 1942. p. 12. Retrieved July 2, 2023. at which time she married writer Charles Corwin White.Yale University. (1951) After Twenty-Five Years : Classes of 1926-1926S. Class Secretaries Bureau. pp. 454-455. They remained married until White's death in 1967, on Christmas Day. She had one child by her first marriage, a son, William MacGibbon Kane, who was born in 1933 and died in 1977, predeceasing his mother."Deaths, Funeral Announcements: White, Charles Corwin". The Los Angeles Times. December 27, 1967. Class Secretaries Bureau. p. 26. Retrieved July 2, 2023.
Harriet MacGibbon died at age 81. She was cremated, and her ashes interred in niche 61046 in the Columbarium of Remembrance at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California.
Filmography Year Title Role Notes1930 The Golf Specialist Snooty woman walking dog short, bit part, uncredited1961 Cry for Happy Mrs. Bennett 1961 The Absent Minded Professor Wedding guest uncredited1961 All in a Night's Work Dowager uncredited1962 A Majority of One Mrs. Putnam 1962 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Dona Luisa Desnoyers 1963 Son of Flubber Mrs. Edna Daggett 1965 Fluffy Mrs. Claridge
TV filmography Dragnet 1967 Season 1 Episode 6 (1967) as Flobelle Mirada Wacky Zoo of Morgan City (1970) as Mrs. Westerfield The Judge and Jake Wyler (1972) as hostess The Best Place to Be (1979)
TV series – regular Golden Windows (1954) as Mrs. Brandon (credited as Harriet McGibbon) Hazel (1961) as Mother Baxter The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1969) as Mrs. Margaret Drysdale The Smothers Brothers Show (1965) as Mrs. Costello
References
External links
"History of Homeopathy – Biographies" about MacGibbon's father with some family background