Nana Irene Bryant (November 23, 1888 – December 24, 1955) was an American film, stage, and television actress. She appeared in more than 100 films between 1935 and 1955.
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Biography
Bryant was born on November 23, 1888, in Cincinnati, Ohio. After "an excellent musical education", she debuted on state in a Cincinnati stock theater company. She headed a repertory troupe that toured the middle United States before she became the leading woman in a California stock company. She eventually "became an established favorite in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other Pacific Coast cities" for six years. She performed in leading vocal roles in Topsy and Eva in Chicago and California and was a featured singer with the Tivoli Opera Company in San Francisco.
She appeared in stock companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and spent several seasons on tour. She also played on Broadway, appearing in the role of Morgan le Fay in Rodgers and Hart's A Connecticut Yankee, before working in films. Her other Broadway credits included Marriage Is for Single People (1945), Baby Pompadour (1934), A Ship Comes In (1934), The First Apple (1933), The Dubarry (1932), The Stork is Dead (1932), Heigh-Ho, Everybody (1932), The Padre (1926), The Wild Rose (1926), No More Women (1926), The Firebrand (1924).
In 1935, Bryant went to Hollywood to work under contract to Columbia Pictures Corporation. She remained on the West Coast until 1950, when she began doing a daily television program in New York. She returned to Hollywood in 1953.
Bryant had a supporting role in the Frank Morgan Show, a summer replacement for Jack Benny's program in 1946.
