ALEX BROWN
Irma P. Hall, the actress who played Josephine “Big Mama Joe” Joseph in the 1997 film Soul Food, died on Tuesday, November 10, in Dallas. She was 91. Her family confirmed the death on Wednesday and did not give a cause, according to ABC News and Variety. Hall spent decades as a schoolteacher before becoming one of Hollywood’s most recognizable screen matriarchs, and she won a Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers.
In a statement shared with ABC News, her family described her as “a beloved actress, author, poet, educator, and public speaker.” She is survived by her daughter, Irma Hall Crayton.
Who was Irma P. Hall?
Hall was born Irma Dolores Player on June 3, 1935, in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up on Chicago’s South Side. After graduating from Texas College in 1956, she taught English, French and Spanish in Houston and Dallas schools for more than two decades.
Her acting career began almost by accident. Actor and director Raymond St. Jacques heard her reading poetry in Dallas and cast her in his 1973 film Book of Numbers. She kept teaching while taking roles, helped found the Dallas Minority Repertory Theatre, and only went full time as an actor in 1984.
Her most famous roles
Hall was 60 when A Family Thing (1996) gave her a major film role as Aunt T., a blind woman guiding two half brothers played by Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. Critics singled her out, and she won awards from the Chicago and Kansas City film critics groups.
A year later came Soul Food, George Tillman Jr.’s hit about a Chicago family held together by Sunday dinners. As Big Mama Joe, Hall became the warm center of the film and won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress. She returned to the character in Soul Food: The Series.
- Book of Numbers (1973)
- Backdraft (1991) and Mo’ Money (1992)
- A Family Thing (1996)
- Soul Food and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
- Beloved and Patch Adams (1998)
- The Ladykillers and Collateral (2004)
- Meet the Browns (2008)
Cannes recognition for The Ladykillers
In the Coens’ 2004 remake of The Ladykillers, Hall played Marva Munson, a churchgoing landlady who unknowingly rents a room to a gang of thieves led by Tom Hanks. Even reviewers who disliked the film praised her, and she received a Jury Prize at Cannes for the performance. That same year she appeared in Michael Mann’s Collateral.
Legacy
Hall stayed active in Dallas long after Hollywood fame, serving as a church mother at her congregation and supporting youth theater. The Irma P. Hall Black Theatre Awards, established in 2015, carry her name. Her story, a teacher who found stardom in her sixties, is one of the more inspiring careers in modern film.
Hall’s death comes the same week Hollywood lost Stacy Keach at 85.
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Sources: ABC News, Variety, ABC7