Sara Haden

Some sources say she was born in 1898 in Center Point, Texas,^{[note 1][2]} while others claim she was born in Galveston, Texas.^[3][4][5] Her father was John B. Haden, a doctor, and her mother was actress Charlotte Walker. She had a sister. She spent "a considerable portion of her childhood" in Williamstown, Massachusetts. When she was a child, her mother gave her training in acting.^[6]

Haden first appeared on the stage as a maid in a play that starred her mother and was written by her then-stepfather, Eugene Walter.^[5] As early as October 1920, she was appearing with Walter Hampden's acting troupe.^[7] She performed in stock theater for several years before she began acting on Broadway.^[4] Her Broadway theatre debut came in Trigger (1927)^[8] or in Macbeth (1921). Her other Broadway credits included Lawful Larceny (1922), Out of Step (1925), The Wrecker (1928), Girl Trouble (1928), Hot Water (1929), First Mortgage (1929), and The Hill Between Us (1938).^[9]

A part in the play Sunup took Haden to London in the 1920s. It ran for 32 weeks, and the cast gave a command performance for King George and Queen Mary.^[5] A review in The Theatre World and Illustrated Stage Review said of Haden's performance, "Without any great help from the playwright or from her own personality, this young actress gives us a performance which for depth and purity of feeling has no parallel in my memory since Marie Lohr played Marguerite in Faust some seventeen years ago."^[10]

She made her film debut in 1934 (one year after her mother's retirement) in the Katharine Hepburn vehicle Spitfire.^[11] Haden later became a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player in the late 1930s and generally appeared in small roles in many of the studio's films, most notably in the Andy Hardy series starring Mickey Rooney, cast as the spinsterish Aunt Milly Forrest.^[12]

Haden made her last film, Andy Hardy Comes Home, in 1958,^[3] but was active on television until a 1965 guest spot on Dr. Kildare. She was most notable for her stern, humorless characterisations such as a truant officer in Shirley Temple's Captain January (1936), but she also played the much-loved teacher Miss Pipps, who is unjustly fired in the Our Gang comedy Come Back, Miss Pipps (1941). Other films in which she appeared include Poor Little Rich Girl (1936), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), and The Bishop's Wife (1947). Her television appearances include episodes of Climax!, Bourbon Street Beat, and Bonanza. She had a guest appearance on Perry Mason as Florence Harvey in the 1959 episode, "The Case of the Romantic Rogue".

Haden played Dora Darling in My Favorite Martian, season 2 episode 28, "Once Upon a Martian's Mother's Day" in 1965.

Haden was married to film actor Richard Abbott (born Seamon Vandenberg) from 1921 until their divorce in 1948.^{[citation needed]} She died on September 15, 1981, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California,^[11] at age 82.^[3]