She heard that lighthouses were being sold off by the government, most recently Hendricks Head on Southport Island, and thought buying one would be fun. She connected with Maine through her summer stock theater work, and eventually decided to look for a summer home to buy. Hamilton had an apartment on Gramercy Park in New York City and an estate in Dutchess County, N.Y. She was extremely well respected within the industry.
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“At first, movie actors couldn’t handle live TV, where there were no ‘cut and retake,’ but she knew how to ad lib,” he said. Hamilton continued acting regularly, for film, television, stage and radio until 1982. She was already working for MGM when her agent called with the studio’s offer of the part of The Witch. Talkies were uprooting silent films, and Hamilton’s excellent diction (“She could speak the King’s English,” said Meserve) paid off. She went to Hollywood the following year.
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Her professional acting debut came on the New York stage in 1932.
But before pursuing acting further as a career, her parents insisted she first go to college to be sure she would have an alternative for earning a living, so she trained as a kindergarten teacher and taught elementary school in Boston and New York.
Meserve and his wife, Helen, later bought property in Cape Newagen, where they now live.īorn in 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, Hamilton made her acting debut in high school theater. The 20-acre island is about 900 feet from the mainland and has a farmhouse built in 1852. Hamilton and her son, Hamilton “Ham” Meserve, bought Cape Island in 1961. The islands were considered excellent outposts for keeping the harbor and mainland safe from French privateers.
According to the Boothbay Historical Society, the Boothbay region has a settlement history going back to the early 17th century, when English fishermen and farmers settled there. That’s because the primary resident there, during summers from 1961 to 1985, was Margaret Hamilton, the actor who played the Wicked Witch of the West and Elmira Gulch in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.Ĭontrary to her character, one of the top villains in movie history, Hamilton was known by her mainland neighbors, in Maine and everywhere else, for her sweet nature.Ĭape Island is located off the tip of the tiny village of Cape Newagen, which is itself on the larger island of Southport, south of Boothbay. CAPE ISLAND - Tour boat operators sometimes entertained their passengers by referring to Cape Island as “Witch’s Island.”