Too short to be a leading lady, Beryl Mercer had a very active and productive career playing motherly characters. She had played opposite of great leading men like Colin Clive, Robert Montgomery, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Leslie Howard, Spencer Tracy, and Randolph Scott. Beryl played Queen Victoria in The Little Princess (1939) and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). She and Holmes Herbert had a daughter, Joan.