Linda Mathews Watkins (May 23, 1908 – October 31, 1976) was an American stage, radio, film, and television actress.

Early life

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, as Linda Mathews Watkins, the daughter of Gardiner and Elizabeth R. (née Mathews) Watkins. Her father was active in real estate in Boston. She was related to physicist Albert A. Michelson and painter Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore. Watkins attended a teachers' college because her parents wanted her to teach. She later went to study at the Theatre Guild.

Career

Stage

After six months Watkins began to appear with the Theater Guild's summer repertory program in Scarborough, New York. Three weeks after she finished a course at the Theater Guild's Dramatic School, she had the lead in The Devil in the Cheese. The producer was Charles Hopkins. Watkins gained additional acting experience during a season with the Hartman stock theater company in Columbus, Ohio, after which the Shubert Organization gave her the lead in its Chicago production of Trapped. Aged 17, she performed in the Tom Cushing comedy The Devil In The Cheese with Fredric March at the Charles Hopkins Theater in New York City. In 1928, she appeared in the Forest Theater production of Trapped by Samuel Shipman. She appeared in a revival of The Wild Duck in November 1928, starred in the George S. Kaufman/Ring Lardner comedy June Moon in 1929, and co-starred with Ralph Morgan in Sweet Stranger in 1930.

Film

She debuted in movies in Sob Sister (1931), a film in which she plays a female reporter. Reviewer Muriel Babcock remarked that Watkins "is cool, blond, poised, good to look upon. She plays the title role with admirable restraint and gives every evidence of being a comer in films." Her second movie was Good Sport (1931), a screen adaptation of a story by William J. Hurlbut. Produced by the Fox Film Company, Watkins played Marilyn Parker, a naive wife caught up in a love triangle. Her co-stars were Alan Dinehart and John Boles. She appeared in Charlie Chan's Chance, a lost 1932 film starring Warner Oland as the famous detective. Edmund Lowe and Watkins co-starred in Cheaters at Play (1932). Her other film credits included From Hell It Came (1957), Ten North Frederick (1958), As Young as We Are (1958), Cash McCall (1960), Because They're Young (1960), The Parent Trap (1961), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Huckleberry Finn (1974) and Bad Ronald (1974).

Television

Watkins appeared in numerous television broadcasts beginning in 1950 with an episode of The Billy Rose Show. Other television shows appearances include The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Asphalt Jungle, Bonanza, The David Niven Show, Death Valley Days, The Doris Day Show, Gunsmoke (S7E3 - as Mattie in the episode “Miss Kitty” & S8E10 - as Mrs. Dorf in the episode “The Hunger”), Hazel, How to Marry a Millionaire, Ichabod and Me, The Investigators, M Squad, McMillan & Wife, The Munsters, Perry Mason, Peter Gunn, and Wagon Train. One of her last television roles as a guest star was as Maggie MacKenzie in The Waltons in the episode "The Journey" (1973).

Personal life

Watkins married lawyer Gabriel Lorie Hess, a widower, at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on January 28, 1932.

Death

Watkins died in Los Angeles in 1976, aged 68, from undisclosed causes.

Filmography

Film

Television

Sources