Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#148117
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
May Robson works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
May Robson appears in 5 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without May. Bringing Up Baby is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, adventure. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Howard Hawks, Norman Taurog, William A. Wellman and others, May Robson helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) as Aunt Elizabeth · A Star Is Born (1937) as Lettie Blodgett · The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) as Aunt Polly
Career snapshot
Ranked #148117 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
5
1933–1938
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Bringing Up Baby
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Bringing Up Baby
Most frequent director
Howard Hawks
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Howard Hawks
Most common genre
Romance
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1930s
6.6 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Bringing Up Baby, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Star Is Born — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.6
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
6.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Bringing Up Baby, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Star Is Born.
Most productive era
1930s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s |
|---|---|
| Drama | 6.62 films |
| Comedy | 6.72 films |
| Romance | 6.83 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Queen Of Hearts.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1938Bringing Up Baby
7.2 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1938The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The current state of the argument, as Aunt Polly.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
5 of 5 films
as Aunt Elizabeth
Directed by Howard Hawks
as Lettie Blodgett
Directed by William A. Wellman
as Countess Vronsky
Directed by Clarence Brown
as Queen Of Hearts
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Aunt Elizabeth
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Performance score7.3
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Aunt Elizabeth gives May Robson a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Lettie Blodgett
A Star Is Born (1937)
Performance score7.0
A Star Is Born asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lettie Blodgett is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Aunt Polly
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
Performance score6.9
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aunt Polly is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Countess Vronsky
Anna Karenina (1935)
Performance score6.6
Anna Karenina asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Countess Vronsky is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Aunt Elizabeth
Start here. Bringing Up Baby is the clearest statement of what May Robson does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet May at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Alice in Wonderland (1933)
Keeps the comedy register of Bringing Up Baby but asks for a colder reading of it.
Anna Karenina (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Alice in Wonderland — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
A Star Is Born (1937)
Keeps the romance register of Anna Karenina but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938)
A deliberate change of key after A Star Is Born — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Norman Z. McLeod
Director
1 film together
Notably Alice in Wonderland
Clarence Brown
Director
1 film together
Notably Anna Karenina
William A. Wellman
Director
1 film together
Notably A Star Is Born
Norman Taurog
Director
1 film together
Notably The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together
Notably Bringing Up Baby
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Howard Hawks
Director
1 film together · 7.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bringing Up BabyWilliam A. Wellman
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Star Is BornNorman Taurog
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Adventures of Tom SawyerClarence Brown
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Anna KareninaNorman Z. McLeod
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Alice in WonderlandSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
A Star Is Born
as Lettie Blodgett
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Alice in Wonderland
as Queen Of Hearts
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. May Robson has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Romance Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in romance, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
A Star Is Born
as Lettie Blodgett
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Alice in Wonderland
as Queen Of Hearts
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Bringing Up Baby
as Aunt Elizabeth
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
as Aunt Polly
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
A Star Is Born
as Lettie Blodgett
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Alice in Wonderland
as Queen Of Hearts
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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