Ethel Owen

Ethel Owen ( Ethel Marguerite Waite; March 30, 1893 – February 16, 1997) was an American actress with a lengthy career on stage as well as radio and television. In her early sixties, during the mid-1950s, she had a memorable recurring TV role on The Honeymooners, playing Mrs. Gibson, Ralph Kramden's sharp-tongued, interfering mother-in-law. Early years, marriage and three daughters Born in Chicago, Ethel Marguerite Waite started performing around 1907, at age 14. Although she is credited with appearances on a number of vaudeville circuits, her primary venue was the legitimate stage, mostly as a member of regional touring theatre groups. Following marriage, in her early twenties, to Wisconsin veterinarian Raymond G. Owens on June 19, 1919, she had three daughters. Her eldest child, Mary, would later move to Texas, where in Fort Worth she worked professionally as a social worker; however, Ethel's younger girls, Virginia and Armilda Jane, followed their mother into show business as actresses. While raising a family, Ethel Waite continued to act but under the new stage name "Ethel Owen", although she opted to drop the "s" in her married surname. Daughter Armilda Jane, born in Milwaukee in 1923, even began her own career as a child actress in her mother's plays. Well known in summer stock by her tenth birthday, she was offered a film contract at a time when the popularity and rising success of Shirley Temple on screen prompted various studios to conduct searches for other young talented performers, but her mother decided against the move to motion pictures. In succeeding years, Armilda Jane became a teenage performer in musical comedy and, changing her stage name to Pamela Britton, had co-starring roles on Broadway and in a few films, including two classics, the 1945 musical Anchors Aweigh, playing Frank Sinatra's Brooklyn-accented girlfriend, and the 1950 noir, D.O.A.. Eventually, Britton moved to TV sitcoms, appearing, for example, as the scatterbrained title character in Blondie (1957), and as the inquisitive landlady, Mrs. Brown, in My Favorite Martian (1963-1966). The middle daughter, Virginia, proceeded in her mother's footsteps by retaining her own given name and likewise adopting "Owen" as a stage surname.