Mary Wickes (June 13, 1910 – October 22, 1995) was an American film and television actress.

Wickes was born as Mary Isabella Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri of German and Irish Protestant extraction. She was a member of Phi Mu women's fraternity. She began acting in films in the late 1930s, and was also a member of the Orson Welles troupe on his radio drama Mercury Theatre of the Air. One of her earliest significant film appearances was in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), reprising her stage role of "Nurse Preen".

A tall (5'10"), gangling woman with a distinctive voice, Wickes would ultimately prove herself adept as a comedienne, but she first attracted attention in the film Now, Voyager (1942), as the wise-cracking nurse who helped Bette Davis' character during her mother's illness. (She appeared with Davis again in June Bride.) The same year she had a large part in the Bud Abbott and Lou Costello comedy-whodunnit, titled Who Done It?. She continued playing supporting roles in films during the next decade, usually playing wisecracking characters. A prime example of which was her deadpan characterisation of Stella, the harassed housekeeper, in the Doris Day vehicles By the Light of the Silvery Moon and On Moonlight Bay, her ascerbic asides balancing much of the sugar coated nostalgia evident in these films. She played similar roles in two later movies with Rosalind Russell The Trouble With Angels and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows in the mid 1960s.

Moving to the new medium television in the 1950s she played the warm, yet wisecracking maid Katie in the Mickey Mouse Club serial Walt Disney Presents: Annette and regular roles in the sitcoms Make Room for Daddy and Dennis The Menace, as well as appearing as Emma the housekeeper in the holiday classic White Christmas (1954), starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. She served as the live-action reference model for Cruella De Vil in Walt Disney film One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and played Mrs. Squires in the film adaptation of Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1962). A lifelong friend of Lucille Ball, she played frequent guest roles in Ball's three television series, I Love Lucy, Here's Lucy and The Lucy Show. In 1970-1971 she guest starred on CBS's The Doris Day Show. (Day was another of her long-term friends.)

She was also a regular on the Sid and Marty Krofft children's television show Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and the sitcom Doc. By the 1980s, her appearances in television series such as M*A*S*H, The Love Boat, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Murder, She Wrote had made her a widely recognisable character actress. She also appeared in a variety of Broadway shows, including a 1979 revival of Oklahoma! where she portrayed Aunt Eller.

She appeared in the 1990 film Postcards From the Edge cast as Shirley MacLaine's mother, and from 1989 to 1991 portrayed Marie Murkin in the television movie and series adaptations of Father Dowling Mysteries. However, she achieved the biggest success of her career in Sister Act (1992). As Sister Mary Lazarus, Wickes' portrayal of a very gruff, strict but vulnerable elderly nun contributed to the film's popularity, and she reprised the role in the sequel Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She also did the voice of Maxine on the line of greeting cards that are still in publication.

She appeared in the 1994 film version of Little Women before she became ill. She was hospitalized the following year suffering from numerous ailments, including renal failure, massive gastrointestinal bleeding, severe hypotension, ischemic cardiomyopathy, anemia and breast cancer (stage of cancer unknown), which cumulatively resulted in her death during surgery in 1995.

Although the nature of their relationship has been disputed, she was for many years the companion of playwright Abby Conrad. A registered Republican who had never been married, Wickes left a large estate and made a $2 million bequest, in memory of her parents, for the Isabella and Frank Wickenhauser Memorial Library Fund for Television, Film and Theater Arts.

Her final film role, voicing the gargoyle Laverne in the animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame was released posthumously in 1996.

In 2004, Wickes was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

From the old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer whose abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that chided the super rich or exceptionally pious, and was a major chastiser in generation-gap comedies. TV holds a vault full of not-to-be-missed vignettes where she served as a brusque foil to many a top TV comic star. Case in point: who could possibly forget her merciless ballet taskmaster, Madame Lamond, putting Lucille Ball through her rigorous paces at the ballet bar in a classic "I Love Lucy" (1951) episode? Unlike the working-class characters she embraced, this veteran character comedienne was actually born Mary Isabella Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a well-to-do banker. Of Irish and German heritage, she grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science. She forsook a law career, however, after being encouraged by a college professor to try theater, and she made her debut doing summer stock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The rest, as they say, is history. With the encouragement of stage legend Ina Claire (I) whom she met doing summer theater, Mary transported herself to New York where she quickly earned a walk-on part in the Broadway play "The Farmer Takes a Wife" starring Henry Fonda in 1934. In the show she also understudied Wizard of Oz, The (1939)'s "Wicked Witch" Margaret Hamilton, and earned excellent reviews when she went on in the part. Plain and hawkish in looks while noticeably tall and gawky in build, Mary was certainly smart enough to see that comedy would become her career path and she enjoyed showing off in roles playing much older than she was. New York stage work continued to pour in, and she garnered roles in "Spring Dance" (1936), "Stage Door" (1936), "Hitch Your Wagon" (1937), "Father Malachy's Miracle (1937) and, in an unusual bit of casting, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre production of "Danton's Death." All the while she kept fine-tuning her craft in summer stock. A series of critically panned plays followed until a huge door opened for her in the form of Miss Preen, the beleaguered nurse to an acid-tongued, wheelchair-bound radio star (played by the hilarious Monty Woolley) in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner." Oddly enough, for once, it was Mary doing the cowering. The play was the toast of Broadway for two wacky years and she went on tour with it as well. She also become a Kaufman favorite. Hollywood took notice as well, and when Warner Bros. decided to film the play, it allowed both Mary and Woolley to recreate their parts. Man Who Came to Dinner, The (1942), which co-starred Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, was a grand film hit and Mary was now officially on board in Hollywood, given plenty of chances to freelance. At Warners she lightened up the proceedings a bit in the Bette Davis tearjerker Now, Voyager (1942) as nurse to Gladys Cooper (I). Elsewhere she traded quips with Lou Costello (I) as a murder suspect in the amusing whodunit Who Done It? (1942); played a WAC in Private Buckaroo (1942) with The Andrews Sisters; and dished out her patented smart-alecky services in both Happy Land (1943) and My Kingdom for a Cook (1943). She returned to Broadway for a few seasons, often for Kaufman, and did some radio work, but returned to Hollywood and played yet another nurse in Decision of Christopher Blake, The (1948), a part written especially for her. She appeared with 'Bette Davis (I)' for a third time in June Bride (1948), finding some fine moments as a magazine editor. Playing characters that were born to butt heads with the stars, she went on to perform yeoman work in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953); I'll See You in My Dreams (1951); White Christmas (1954) and Music Man, The (1962) as one of the "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" housewives of River City. Television roles also began filtering in for Mary as she continued to put her cryptic comedy spin on her harried housekeepers and working women. Mary played second banana to a queue of comedy's best known legends in the 1950s and 1960s, notably Lucille Ball (who was a long-time neighbor and pal off-screen), Danny Thomas (I), Red Skelton, Bob Hope (I), Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lind Hayes (I) and Gertrude Berg. Her work with Berg on the series "Gertrude Berg Show, The" (1961) earned Mary an Emmy nomination. Among babyboomers, she is probably best remembered as Miss Cathcart in "Dennis the Menace" (1959). In later years Mary's gangly figure filled out a bit as she continued to appear here and there on the small screen as both a guest and regular. Later in life she enjoyed a bit of a resurgence. Perhaps remembered earlier for her Sister Clarissa in the madcap comedy film Trouble with Angels, The (1966) with Rosalind Russell, Mary donned the habit once again as crabby musical director Sister Mary Lazarus in the box-office smash Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She also churned out a few roles as cranky relatives as in Postcards from the Edge (1990) as Meryl Streep's grandmother & 'Shirley Maclaine''s mother; and as Aunt March in Little Women (1994) with Winona Ryder. True to form, one of her last roles was voicing a gargoyle in the animated Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1996), which was released after her death. The never-married Los Angeles-based performer died in October of 1995 after entering the hospital with respiratory problems. While a patient, Mary suffered a broken hip from an accidental fall and complications set in following surgery. She was 85. When it came to deadpan comedy, Mary was certainly no second banana. She was a truly a star.