Irene Tedrow

Irene Tedrow (August 3, 1907 – March 10, 1995) was an American character actress in stage, film, television and radio. Among her most notable roles are as Janet Archer in the radio series Meet Corliss Archer, Mrs. Lucy Elkins on the TV sitcom Dennis the Menace, and as Mrs. Webb in the stage production Our Town at the Plumstead Playhouse. Stage Tedrow studied with Ben Iden Payne, who directed the Memorial Theater at Stratford-on-Avon, in England. She also had three seasons' experience with Maurice Evans's troupe in New York City and touring nationally. In 1931, she was a member of the Chautauqua Repertory Theater. Tedrow was a founding member of San Diego's Old Globe Theater and was cast as an ingénue in the beginning of her career. In 1934, she portrayed eighteen characters in multiple adaptations of Shakespearean plays at The Old Globe during the Chicago Fair. She later joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. She appeared on Broadway even through her eighties, in King Richard III (1937), Hamlet (1938-1939), King Henry IV, Part I (1939), Our Town (1969) and Pygmalion.