“Every young actress thinks she’s a tragedian - the more tragic roles, the more you cry, the more you suffer, the better an actress you are. But, when I got a little older, a little more mature, I wanted to get out of my image of “the victimized kid.” I began to say, “Wait a minute. There’s a thing called comedy that takes an even rougher intelligence and more technique and knowledge of the craft.”

-Sylvia Sidney 

Sylvia Sidney in City Streets (1931, dir. Rouben Mamoulian)

Sylvia Sidney in Sabotage (1936, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Sylvia Sidney in Dead End (1937, dir. William Wyler), a crime drama set in the grim, crowded tenements of East New York.

Sylvia Sidney in You Only Live Once (1937, dir. Fritz Lang) (via Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of the Museum of Modern Art)

Sylvia Sidney on the set of The Miracle Man (1932, dir. Norman Z. McLeod) (via)

Sylvia Sidney in Sabotage (1936, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Sylvia Sidney & Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once (1937, dir. Fritz Lang) (via)