Linda Mathews Watkins was an American stage, film and television actress.
Early years
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Watkins was the daughter of Gardiner and Elizabeth R. Watkins. Her father was active in real estate in Boston. She was related to physicist Albert A. Michelson and painter Arthur Radclyffe Dugmore. Watkins attended a teachers' college because her parents wanted her to teach. She later went to study at the Theatre Guild.
Stage
After six months Watkins began to appear with the Theater Guild's summer repertory program in Scarborough, New York. Three weeks after she finished a course at the Theater Guild's Dramatic School, she had the lead in The Devil in the Cheese. When producer Charles Hopkins asked Watkins if she preferred playing comedy or drama, she replied, "Tragedy". He was casting for a comedy production and Watkins was offered the lead role. Watkins gained additional acting experience during a season with the Hartman stock theater company in Columbus, Ohio, after which the Shubert Organization gave her the lead in its Chicago production of Trapped. Aged 17, she performed in the Tom Cushing comedy The Devil InThe Cheese with Fredric March at the Charles Hopkins Theater in New York City. In 1928, she appeared in the Forest Theater production of Trapped by Samuel Shipman. She appeared in a revival of The Wild Duck in November 1928, starred in the George S. Kaufman/Ring Lardner comedy June Moon in 1929, and co-starred with Ralph Morgan in Sweet Stranger in 1930.
Motion pictures
She debuted in movies in Sob Sister, a film in which she plays a female reporter. Reviewer Muriel Babcock remarked that Watkins "is cool, blond, poised, good to look upon. She plays the title role with admirable restraint and gives every evidence of being a comer in films." Her second movie was Good Sport, a screen adaptation of a story by William J. Hurlbut. Produced by the Fox Film Company, Watkins played Marilyn Parker, a naive wife caught up in a love triangle. Her co-stars were Alan Dinehart and John Boles. She appeared in Charlie Chan's Chance, a lost 1932 film starring Warner Oland as the famous detective. Edmund Lowe and Watkins co-starred in Cheaters at Play. Her other film credits included From Hell It Came, Ten North Frederick, As Young as We Are, Cash McCall, Because They're Young, The Parent Trap, Good Neighbor Sam, Huckleberry Finn and Bad Ronald.
Marriage
Watkins married lawyer Gabriel L. Hess, a widower, at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on January 28, 1932. He was attorney for Will Hays and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. The couple had a son, Adam Hess, who died in 1969; he left three daughters, Elizabeth, Faye, and Emily, Watkins' granddaughters. Watkins obtained her release from Fox prior to her marriage.
Television
Watkins appeared in numerous television broadcasts beginning with an episode of The Billy Rose Show in 1950. Other shows in which she performed are Wagon Train, Death Valley Days, How to Marry a Millionaire, M Squad, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Peter Gunn, Perry Mason, The David Niven Show, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Gunsmoke, Gunsmoke, Gunsmoke season 7 Gunsmoke The Asphalt Jungle, The Munsters, Hazel, and The Doris Day Show. She also appeared as Emily Hull, the mother of Sally McMillan, in several episodes of McMillan & Wife. One of her last television appearances was as a guest star on The Waltons in 1973 as Maggie MacKenzie, in the episode "The Journey".
Death
Linda Watkins died in Los Angeles in 1976, aged 68, from undisclosed causes.
