Mary Anderson (actress, born 1918)

Mary Anderson (April 3, 1918 – April 6, 2014) was an American actress, who appeared in 31 films and 22 television productions between 1939 and 1965. She was best known for her small supporting role in the film Gone With the Wind as well as one of the main characters in the 1943 film Lifeboat.

Mary B. "Bebe" Anderson was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She attended Howard College (now Samford University).

Her younger brother James Anderson (1921–1969) was also an actor, best known as Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

After two uncredited roles, she made her first important screen appearance in Gone With the Wind (1939). After auditioning as one of the 1,400 actresses involved in the search for Scarlett, she received the supporting role of Maybelle Merriwether.

In 1944, she played Alice the nurse, one of the ten characters in the Alfred Hitchcock film Lifeboat. Ending her film career in the early 1950s, she occasionally acted on television, for example as Catherine Harrington on Peyton Place in 1964 (episodes 2-20). She made a guest appearance in Perry Mason as Arlene Scott in "The Case of the Rolling Bones" (1958).

Anderson was married to Leonard M. Behrens from 1940 to 1950. Her second marriage was to cinematographer Leon Shamroy from 1953 until his death in 1974. They had one child, Anderson Alexander Shamroy, who died July 1, 1956 at the age of two months. Mary Anderson died on April 6, 2014 in Burbank, California, three days after her 96th birthday. She was under hospice care and died in a condo in Toluca Lake that she shared with her long-time companion, Gordon Carnon. Her death left two surviving credited Gone With the Wind credited cast members, Mickey Kuhn and Olivia de Havilland, who played the roles of Beau Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton, respectively.

She is often confused with the stage actress Mary Anderson (1859–1940) or the silent film actress Mary Anderson (1897–1986).