Maree Cheatham

Maree Cheatham's career starts in daytime and never entirely leaves it. She originated Marie Horton on Days of Our Lives and put in long runs on Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital, neither of which is indexed here. For much of that period she was billed as Marie Cheatham, which is why her filmography can look like two people's work.

The film side is a catalog of one-scene professionals, and the character names tell the story: Nice Lady on Plane in The Wedding Singer, Matronly Interviewer in America's Sweethearts, Father's Secretary in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Party Guest in Rumor Has It.... Parts like these exist to move a scene along in twenty seconds. Directors kept hiring her for them because she plays the person rather than the function. Mabel Sanderson in A Night at the Roxbury and Mrs. Millstone in Lost & Found get names and a little more room, and the difference in her performance is one of scale, not effort.

Two credits are worth seeking out on their own: Sarah Dean in Beetlejuice, and Dorothy Watson in Soul Man in 1986. Later comedy found her again in GCB and Baskets, and a Nickelodeon run as Nona introduced her to an audience several generations younger. She has been on screen since the mid-sixties and was still working half a century later, which is rarer than most of the leading roles she supported.