Clara Blandick
American actress
Clara Blandick (born Clara Blanchard Dickey; June 4, 1876 – April 15, 1962) was an American character actress of the film, stage and theater. Today's audiences may recognize her as Aunt Em in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer classic film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz (1939). As a character actress, she often played eccentric elderly matriarchs.
Early life
Clara Blanchard Dickey was born on June 4, 1876, the daughter of Isaac B. Dickey and Harriet "Hattie" Dickey (née Mudgett), aboard the Willard Mudgett – an American ship captained by her father (named after one of her maternal relatives), and docked in Victoria Harbour, British Hong Kong. She was delivered by Captain William H. Blanchard, whose ship, Wealthy Pendleton, was anchored nearby. His wife, Clara Pendleton Blanchard, was also present. To thank the Blanchards, Captain and Mrs. Dickey named their daughter Clara Blanchard Dickey. When she became successful as an actress, she took the first syllable of "Blanchard" and the first syllable of "Dickey" to create her stage name, "Clara Blandick". While she often used 1880 as her year of birth for professional purposes, she was actually born in 1876.
“Clara Blandick” enters the record as american actress. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clara, Blandick and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q325695. VIAF identifies the subject as 314799618. The Library of Congress control number is n85378946. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1876, 1962, 1939 and 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clara Blandick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.