The daughter of a retired sea captain, British actress Norma Varden was a piano prodigy. After studying in Paris she played concerts into her teens but at last decided that this was be an uncertain method of making a living--so she went to the security of acting. In her first stage appearance in "Peter Pan", Varden, not yet twenty, portrayed the adult role of Mrs. Darling, setting the standard for her subsequent stage and film work; too tall and mature-looking for ingenues, she would enjoy a long career in character roles. Bored with dramatic assignments, Varden gave comedy a try at the famous Aldwych Theatre, where from 1929 through 1933 she was resident character comedienne in the theatre's well-received marital farces. After her talkie debut in the comedy "A Night Like This" in 1930, she remained busy on the British film scene for over a decade. Moving to Hollywood in 1941, she found that the typecasting system frequently precluded large roles. Though she was well served as Robert Benchley's wife in "The Major and the Minor" her next assignment was the unbilled role of a pickpocket victim's wife in "Casablanca". Her work encompassed radio as well as films for the rest of the decade; in nearly all her assignments Norma played a haughty British or New York aristocrat who looked down with disdain at the commoners. By the 1950s, she was enjoying such sizable parts as the society lady who is nearly strangled by Robert Walker in "Strangers on a Train", the bejeweled wife of Charles Coburn in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", George Sanders' dragon-like mother in "Jupiter's Darling", and the Von Trapps' housekeeper in "The Sound of Music". After countless television and film roles, Norma Varden retired in 1972, spending most of her time thereafter as a spokesperson for the Screen Actors
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