Born in Malden, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ida May and Charles Edward Nutter, Oliver quit school at age 14 to pursue a stage career.

She achieved her first success in 1917 on Broadway in Jerome Kern's musical comedy Oh, Boy!, playing the hero's comically dour Aunt Penelope.

[1] In 1925, Oliver appeared on Broadway in The Cradle Snatchers, costarring Mary Boland, Gene Raymond, and Humphrey Bogart.

[10] A 1940 comic performance as Laurence Olivier's Mr. Darcy's domineering aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice[11] and a 1941 role as Merle Oberon's grandmother in Lydia[12] concluded her film career.

Oliver died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (today Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) on her 59th birthday in 1942 shortly after being diagnosed with abdominal cancer, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.