Mary Servoss
American actress
Mary Servoss (June 2, 1888 – November 20, 1968) was an American stage and screen actress. Her main career was centered on the Broadway stage.
Biography
She was born to Carlos A. Servoss and Mary (née Baker) in Chicago. She made her stage debut in 1905 in a stock company playing a small part in Lorna Doone. In 1922, she played Portia to David Warfield's Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and she appeared in the 1929 play Street Scene, in the 1931 play Counsellor-at-Law starring Paul Muni, and as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet opposite both Raymond Massey (1931) and Leslie Howard (1936).
She was a veteran stage actress when she made her first film in 1940 and made over 20 films by the time of her last film in 1949.
When not in the theatre, her hobby was restoring old farmhouses.
Mary Servoss died in Los Angeles on November 20, 1968.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mary Servoss” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16006472. VIAF identifies the subject as 160381029. The Library of Congress control number is no2010191550. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1968, 1905 and 1922.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Mary Servoss”, its source revision and the description used here.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Servoss” 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.