Born 03/27/1929
No one's idea of a beauty, Anne Ramsey was a diminutive, stoop-shouldered character player of stage, film and TV who made a name for herself playing distasteful old hags and battle-axes. Despite a long and distinguished career on stage, she may be best remembered for her Oscar-nominated performance as the nightmarish mother of Danny DeVito in his black comedy "Throw Momma From the Train" (1987). Ramsey had a distinctively husky and slurred voice during the last few years of her life--the period of her greatest success and fame--due to having had part of her tongue removed during throat cancer surgery.
Prior to this potentially career ending procedure, Ramsey had done extensive stage work in Philadelphia, NYC and L.A., TV-movies and episodic guest shots and small broad character work in films ("For Pete's Sake" 1974; "Goin' South" 1978; "Any Which Way You Can" 1988). Amazingly she made her new speech impediment into a career boost beginning with her fulsome portrayal of Mama Fratelli, the cartoonish harridan who menaces "The Goonies" (1985). Ramsey also had a memorable if improbably grisly encounter with a basketball in Wes Craven's oddball teen horror flick, "Deadly Friend" (1986) and played the mother of convict turned playwright Nick Nolte in the disarming comedy-drama "Weeds" (1987). She appeared in several more features including the Bill Murray vehicle "Scrooged" (1987), did TV guest shots on "Knight Rider", "ALF", and "Night Court", and appeared in several TV-movies before dying of throat cancer in 1988.
