Bill Schenley
2005-08-22 05:58:03 UTC
Colleen Dewhurst, the Actress, Dies at 67
Photo: Loading Image...
FROM: The New York Times (August 24th 1991) ~
By Mervyn Rothstein
Colleen Dewhurst, one of America's foremost actresses, whose career on
stage, screen and television spanned 40 years and earned her two Tony
Awards and three Emmys, died Thursday night at her home in South
Salem, N.Y. She was 67 years old.
She died of cancer, said her son Alexander R. Scott, a theatrical
stage manager and writer.
Ms. Dewhurst was closely identified with the works of Eugene O'Neill.
She was nominated for a Tony in 1973 for her performance as Christine
in O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra," in which she was hailed as
one of the United States' pre-eminent tragic actresses, and in 1974
won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Josie Hogan in the acclaimed
revival of O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten."
Her most recent New York appearances were in 1987, as O'Neill's wife
Carlotta Monterey O'Neill in "My Gene," a one-woman play by Barbara
Gelb at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and on Broadway in 1988 as
Mary Tyrone in O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and as Essie
Miller in his "Ah, Wilderness!"
Led Actors' Equity
Ms. Dewhurst also served two terms as president of the Actors' Equity
Association, the 39,000-member union of professional actors and stage
managers, holding office from June 1985 until May of this year.
An imposing presence both in person and on stage, Ms. Dewhurst was
known as a woman never hesitant about using her distinctive big
throaty voice to express an opinion on almost any subject. In the
theater, she conveyed a mature sexuality, a folkish earthiness; her
feline smile, crinkly eyes and high cheekbones combined to soften her
large stature and enable the audience to feel closer to her and to
identify with her characters, who were often tragic.
Her friends considered her passionate and caring. "She's like an earth
mother," the actress Maureen Stapleton once said, "but in real life
she's not to be let out without a keeper. She's a pushover, a
pussycat. She's the madonna of the birds with broken wings."
Colleen Dewhurst was born in Montreal on June 3, 1924. Her father was
Fred Dewhurst, a hockey and football player who later became sales
manager of a lighting concern. Her family left Canada when she was a
child, moving first to Boston and later to Milwaukee.
She attended Milwaukee-Downer Collegewhere she decided to become an
actress. She moved to New York, attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts
for two years, and studied acting privately with Joseph Anthony and
Harold Clurman. But finding stage work was not easy.
She once described the 10 years from 1948 to 1958 as desperate and
frustrating. "It was murder -- murder," she said. She worked as a
receptionist, an elevator operator and on a telephone switchboard
between roles in summer stock from Tennessee to Maine and bit parts in
New York.
Ms. Dewhurst actually made her Broadway debut in a very small role as
a dancer in Mr. Clurman's 1952 revival of O'Neill's "Desire Under the
Elms." But her first big break came in the mid-1950's, when she came
to the attention of Joseph Papp, who was just beginning his New York
Shakespeare Festival, producing plays on the Lower East Side. Playing
Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1956, she was seen by Brooks
Atkinson, the chief theater critic of The New York Times. Mr. Atkinson
praised her acting in print, and the public began to take notice.
Major success began after the 1958 Greenwich Village Circle in the
Square production of Edwin Justus Mayer's "Children of Darkness," in
which she appeared with another up-and-coming performer, George C.
Scott. The production was staged by Jose Quintero, who would be her
director for many O'Neill roles.
Early in 1959, she played Cleopatra to Mr. Scott's Antony in
Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" for Mr. Papp at the Heckscher
Theater. The next year, Ms. Dewhurst and Mr. Scott divorced their
respective spouses (Ms. Dewhurst had wed the actor James Vickery in
1947) and married. They had two sons, divorced, then later remarried
and divorced again.
Ms. Dewhurst's first major Broadway role came in a brief 1960
production of Albert Camus's "Caligula," but the next year she won her
first Tony Award, as best featured actress, for her portrayal of a
suddenly widowed young mother in Tad Mosel's "All the Way Home," an
adaptation of James Agee's novel "A Death in the Family."
In 1963, she returned to Circle in the Square and to "Desire Under the
Elms," but this time instead of being a dancer she was a co-star, with
Mr. Scott and Rip Torn, portraying Abbie Putnam in a critically
praised production directed by Mr. Quintero.
Mr. Quintero also staged the 1974 production of "A Moon for the
Misbegotten," in which she co-starred with Jason Robards. Writing in
The New York Times, Clive Barnes said Ms. Dewhurst "spoke O'Neill as
if it were being spoken for the first time -- and not the first time
in a theater (you always hope for that) but for the first time in a
certain New England farm, on a certain September night in 1923."
Among her many screen credits was the recent movie "Dying Young," with
Julia Roberts and her son Campbell Scott, who also acted with her in
the Broadway revivals of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Ah,
Wilderness!"
Her television appearances included three seasons playing Candice
Bergen's mother on "Murphy Brown," for which she won an Emmy Award in
1989. She also received Emmys for her roles in "Between Two Women" and
"And Those She Left Behind."
Last year, as president of Equity, Ms. Dewhurst became embroiled in
the union's dispute with the producer Cameron Mackintosh over whether
Jonathan Pryce should be allowed to perform the role of a Eurasian
pimp that he created in the London production of "Miss Saigon" when
the show opened on Broadway.
The union first barred Mr. Pryce and then reversed its decision, and
he went on to win the Tony Award this year as best actor in a musical.
In announcing the ban on Mr. Pryce and her support for the union's
declaration that it was inappropriate in 1990 for a Caucasian actor to
portray a Eurasian, Ms. Dewhurst said, "It's not censorship, because
it wouldn't have been censoring for us to ask for the stopping of the
minstrel show." She was widely criticized for her statement and her
stand, but there were also many who supported her and the union.
Active in Theatrical Causes
Long active in theatrical causes, Ms. Dewhurst was a member of the
board of the Actors' Fund of America, the theatrical charity and
social services agency. She was also the chairwoman of the fund's
executive committee, which helps theater professionals who have AIDS.
She was the chairwoman of the advisory board of the Actors' Work
Program, vice chairwoman of the board of Save the Theaters and a
member of the boards of the American Council for the Arts and the
Theater Development Fund. In 1982, she was active in the unsuccessful
fight to save the Morosco and Helen Hayes Theaters on Broadway from
being torn down to make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
But it was acting rather than activism that she cared about most.
"When I started acting -- just a kid -- it was, 'I like theater,' "
she said some years ago. "Then it was, 'I love theater.' Now it's more
than that."
Ms. Dewhurst lived on a farm in South Salem, in upstate New York, with
her companion of the last 16 years, the Broadway producer Ken
Marsolais. The farm's population also includes eight cats, two dogs,
one goat and a parrot. "The farm," Ms. Dewhurst wrote a few years ago,
"is my eye in the storm, my sanity, my safety, my knowledge that there
is a place that I do exist, that is my home."
In addition to her sons, she is survived by two grandchildren. No
public service is planned.
DIVERSE ROLES, MAJOR AND MINOR
Theater
The Taming of the Shrew, 1956
Children of Darkness, 1958 Antony and Cleopatra, 1959, 1963 Caligula,
1960 All the Way Home, 1961 Desire Under the Elms, 1963 Ballad of the
Sad Cafe, 1963 More Stately Mansions, 1967 Hello and Goodbye, 1969
Mourning Becomes Electra, 1973 A Moon for the Misbegotten, 1974 Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1977 You Can't Take It With You, 1983 My
Gene, 1987 Ah, Wilderness!, 1988 Long Day's Journey Into Night, 1988
AND THOSE SHE LEFT BEHIND
Television
Anne of Avonlea Anne of Green Gables As Is Between Two Women The
Crucible Lantern Hill A Moon for the Misbegotten Murphy Brown No Exit
The Price The Women's Room
Films
The Nun's Story, 1959 Man on a String, 1960 A Fine Madness, 1963 The
Last Run, 1971 Cowboys, 1972 McQ, 1974 Annie Hall, 1977 Ice Castles,
1978 When a Stranger Calls, 1979 Final Assignment, 1980 Tribute, 1980
The Dead Zone, 1983 Dying Young, 1991
---
Photo: Loading Image...
---
An Appreciation;
Dewhurst: An Earth Mother Bigger Than Life;
The Actress Made Her Characters Forceful Yet Understanding;
Imparting The Image Of A Secure Refuge In A Storm
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (August 24th 1991) ~
By Shelia Benson, Critic at Large
If the words Earth Mother ever applied, they clung to Colleen
Dewhurst, like fresh loam to garden boots. The Tony- and Emmy-winning
actress died Thursday night in her Westchester, N.Y., home surrounded
by her children and grandchildren.
That image came, in part, from the roles in the theater with her
personal stamp, towering Eugene O'Neill matriarchs and misbegotten New
England farm women, and the young widow in James Agee's "A Death in
the Family." And it came partly from her voice, which one observer
said sounded as though she had eaten cigarettes her life long, and
partly from a sense she gave of being the rock, the safe harbor, the
one secure refuge in a storm.
But more than anything, on the stage and especially on screen and in a
way that was unique, Dewhurst projected an enveloping sense of
understanding of the world and its frailties. It seemed to come from a
knowledge of who she was: unshy, forceful, opinionated, a gutsy,
ribald 5-foot-8 woman who could seem 6 feet tall onstage and who was
congenitally unsuited to roles with the slightest equivocation about
them.
We have too few women like that in films. Regrettably, there is not
much call for them.
Dewhurst's most recent role, in "Dying Young," in which she appeared
with Campbell Scott, one of her two sons by actor George C. Scott, was
a decent enough one. She played a savvy, earthy Mendocino winery owner
who had outlived three husbands. But, by and large, film never made
the use of Dewhurst that it could have. Women with a strong sense of
themselves seem more intimidating than they should to today's
filmmakers.
Television did better by her, not only bringing some of her finest
stage roles to mass audiences, including "A Moon for the Misbegotten,"
but also memorable roles in the miniseries "Anne of Green Gables."
She got widespread attention for her role as Avery Brown, Murphy
Brown's salty mother, for which she won an Emmy in 1989 and for which
she is nominated again in the non-televised segment of the awards
ceremony scheduled for tonight.
It is wrenching, on the morning after her death, to hear her voice on
an Amtrak commercial; those cello tones unmistakable.
In one of the many times she provided voice-over for a film, in "The
Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War," she
read the words of Dolores Ibarruri, the Loyalist's fiery "La
Pasionaria." Actress and role could not have been more perfectly
matched.
---
Photo: Loading Image...
---
FROM: The Independent (August 24th 1991) ~
By David Shipman
Colleen Dewhurst, actress, born Montreal 3 June 1926, married 1947
James Vickery (marriage dissolved 1959), 1960, 1967 George C .Scott
(two sons; marriages dissolved 1965, 1972), died White Plains NY 22
August 1991.
Colleen Dewhurst was one of those strong, capable actresses whose face
was not quite right for the screen - a fact which did not bother her
even remotely, as she was a Broadway star with a clutch of awards and
also some for her television work.
Among her intermittent movie appearances are: The Nun's Story (1959),
as a mental patient who attacks Audrey Hepburn; A Fine Madness (1966),
as one of the doctors trying to help Sean Connery,
poet-turned-carpet-cleaner; Annie Hall (1977), as that lady's mother;
Ice Castles (1979), as an eccentric skating-rink instructor. She made
much from two supporting roles with John Wayne, in The Cowboys (1972),
as the local school-marm who was also his mistress, and ''McQ''
(1973), as a blowsy police contact who takes him to bed without
answering his question, ''Don't you know any younger men?''
She had leading roles in two of her later films, both attempts at
superior horror movies: When a Stranger Calls (1979), as a middle-
aged lady picked up by psychopathic mental patient, and David
Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), as the wife of a psychic deputy
sheriff. Certainly to be mentioned among her films is The Last Run
(1971), in which she played the one whore in a Portuguese fishing
village, servicing (inter alios) George C. Scott. Also in the cast was
Trish Van Devere, the much-younger actress who succeeded her as Mrs
Scott.
Dewhurst was married twice to that flamboyant actor; she also made
headlines because she was the president of Actors' Equity at the time
it opposed the casting on ethnic grounds of Jonathan Powell in the
Broadway production of Miss Saigon.
In New York her name was often associated with the plays of Eugene
O'Neill, from her debut as one of the neighbours in Desire Under the
Elms in 1952. She and Scott played the leads in another revival of
this drama, in 1963, which brought her an Obie (the off-Broadway award
for excellence).
She won a Tony for her performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten in
1965 and stole the notices from Ingrid Bergman two years later, when
they played the posthumous More Stately Mansions. She also played
Christine in a revival of Mourning Becomes Electra in 1973. Her last
Broadway appearances were in 1988, in a repertory of two O'Neill
plays, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and his only comedy, Ah,
Wilderness!. The year before that she had starred in a one-woman play
about his wife, Carlotta Monterey.
Among the classical roles Dewhurst played were Kate in The Taming of
the Shrew, which brought her her first Obie in 1957, Mrs Squeamish in
The Country Wife, Shakespeare's Cleopatra in 1963 and Gertrude in
Hamlet in 1972.
She won her first Tony for All the Way Home, Tad Mosel's adaptation of
James Agee's novel A Death in the Family, and she appeared with
distinction in another dramatised novel, Edward Albee's version of
Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. She was a natural for
the role of Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which
she originally played on tour in 1965. More recently she did it in New
York, where a revival of You Can't Take It With You showed her equally
adept at comedy.
Television leaves us a kinder memory of her subtle skills than movies
- and a more plentiful one. She won three Emmys - for a mini-series
Murphy Brown, in which she was Candice Bergen's mother; Those She Left
Behind; and Between Two Women, as the dominating mother-in-law of
Farrah Fawcett. British televiewers may recall her in the mini series,
The Blue and the Grey and Anne of Green Gables
Her son Campbell Scott stars opposite Julia Roberts in Dying Young, as
the young man with leukaemia who is nursed by her. Colleen Dewhurst
had a supporting role as a wise, earthy owner of a vineyard and when
the film opens here shortly we shall be permitted a last look at a
major talent.
---
Photos:
Loading Image...
Loading Image...
Colleen Dewhurst in art:
You Can't Take It With You
Loading Image...
(w/Jason Robards, James Coco & Tammy Grimes)
Photo: Loading Image...
FROM: The New York Times (August 24th 1991) ~
By Mervyn Rothstein
Colleen Dewhurst, one of America's foremost actresses, whose career on
stage, screen and television spanned 40 years and earned her two Tony
Awards and three Emmys, died Thursday night at her home in South
Salem, N.Y. She was 67 years old.
She died of cancer, said her son Alexander R. Scott, a theatrical
stage manager and writer.
Ms. Dewhurst was closely identified with the works of Eugene O'Neill.
She was nominated for a Tony in 1973 for her performance as Christine
in O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra," in which she was hailed as
one of the United States' pre-eminent tragic actresses, and in 1974
won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Josie Hogan in the acclaimed
revival of O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten."
Her most recent New York appearances were in 1987, as O'Neill's wife
Carlotta Monterey O'Neill in "My Gene," a one-woman play by Barbara
Gelb at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and on Broadway in 1988 as
Mary Tyrone in O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and as Essie
Miller in his "Ah, Wilderness!"
Led Actors' Equity
Ms. Dewhurst also served two terms as president of the Actors' Equity
Association, the 39,000-member union of professional actors and stage
managers, holding office from June 1985 until May of this year.
An imposing presence both in person and on stage, Ms. Dewhurst was
known as a woman never hesitant about using her distinctive big
throaty voice to express an opinion on almost any subject. In the
theater, she conveyed a mature sexuality, a folkish earthiness; her
feline smile, crinkly eyes and high cheekbones combined to soften her
large stature and enable the audience to feel closer to her and to
identify with her characters, who were often tragic.
Her friends considered her passionate and caring. "She's like an earth
mother," the actress Maureen Stapleton once said, "but in real life
she's not to be let out without a keeper. She's a pushover, a
pussycat. She's the madonna of the birds with broken wings."
Colleen Dewhurst was born in Montreal on June 3, 1924. Her father was
Fred Dewhurst, a hockey and football player who later became sales
manager of a lighting concern. Her family left Canada when she was a
child, moving first to Boston and later to Milwaukee.
She attended Milwaukee-Downer Collegewhere she decided to become an
actress. She moved to New York, attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts
for two years, and studied acting privately with Joseph Anthony and
Harold Clurman. But finding stage work was not easy.
She once described the 10 years from 1948 to 1958 as desperate and
frustrating. "It was murder -- murder," she said. She worked as a
receptionist, an elevator operator and on a telephone switchboard
between roles in summer stock from Tennessee to Maine and bit parts in
New York.
Ms. Dewhurst actually made her Broadway debut in a very small role as
a dancer in Mr. Clurman's 1952 revival of O'Neill's "Desire Under the
Elms." But her first big break came in the mid-1950's, when she came
to the attention of Joseph Papp, who was just beginning his New York
Shakespeare Festival, producing plays on the Lower East Side. Playing
Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1956, she was seen by Brooks
Atkinson, the chief theater critic of The New York Times. Mr. Atkinson
praised her acting in print, and the public began to take notice.
Major success began after the 1958 Greenwich Village Circle in the
Square production of Edwin Justus Mayer's "Children of Darkness," in
which she appeared with another up-and-coming performer, George C.
Scott. The production was staged by Jose Quintero, who would be her
director for many O'Neill roles.
Early in 1959, she played Cleopatra to Mr. Scott's Antony in
Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" for Mr. Papp at the Heckscher
Theater. The next year, Ms. Dewhurst and Mr. Scott divorced their
respective spouses (Ms. Dewhurst had wed the actor James Vickery in
1947) and married. They had two sons, divorced, then later remarried
and divorced again.
Ms. Dewhurst's first major Broadway role came in a brief 1960
production of Albert Camus's "Caligula," but the next year she won her
first Tony Award, as best featured actress, for her portrayal of a
suddenly widowed young mother in Tad Mosel's "All the Way Home," an
adaptation of James Agee's novel "A Death in the Family."
In 1963, she returned to Circle in the Square and to "Desire Under the
Elms," but this time instead of being a dancer she was a co-star, with
Mr. Scott and Rip Torn, portraying Abbie Putnam in a critically
praised production directed by Mr. Quintero.
Mr. Quintero also staged the 1974 production of "A Moon for the
Misbegotten," in which she co-starred with Jason Robards. Writing in
The New York Times, Clive Barnes said Ms. Dewhurst "spoke O'Neill as
if it were being spoken for the first time -- and not the first time
in a theater (you always hope for that) but for the first time in a
certain New England farm, on a certain September night in 1923."
Among her many screen credits was the recent movie "Dying Young," with
Julia Roberts and her son Campbell Scott, who also acted with her in
the Broadway revivals of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "Ah,
Wilderness!"
Her television appearances included three seasons playing Candice
Bergen's mother on "Murphy Brown," for which she won an Emmy Award in
1989. She also received Emmys for her roles in "Between Two Women" and
"And Those She Left Behind."
Last year, as president of Equity, Ms. Dewhurst became embroiled in
the union's dispute with the producer Cameron Mackintosh over whether
Jonathan Pryce should be allowed to perform the role of a Eurasian
pimp that he created in the London production of "Miss Saigon" when
the show opened on Broadway.
The union first barred Mr. Pryce and then reversed its decision, and
he went on to win the Tony Award this year as best actor in a musical.
In announcing the ban on Mr. Pryce and her support for the union's
declaration that it was inappropriate in 1990 for a Caucasian actor to
portray a Eurasian, Ms. Dewhurst said, "It's not censorship, because
it wouldn't have been censoring for us to ask for the stopping of the
minstrel show." She was widely criticized for her statement and her
stand, but there were also many who supported her and the union.
Active in Theatrical Causes
Long active in theatrical causes, Ms. Dewhurst was a member of the
board of the Actors' Fund of America, the theatrical charity and
social services agency. She was also the chairwoman of the fund's
executive committee, which helps theater professionals who have AIDS.
She was the chairwoman of the advisory board of the Actors' Work
Program, vice chairwoman of the board of Save the Theaters and a
member of the boards of the American Council for the Arts and the
Theater Development Fund. In 1982, she was active in the unsuccessful
fight to save the Morosco and Helen Hayes Theaters on Broadway from
being torn down to make way for the Marriott Marquis Hotel.
But it was acting rather than activism that she cared about most.
"When I started acting -- just a kid -- it was, 'I like theater,' "
she said some years ago. "Then it was, 'I love theater.' Now it's more
than that."
Ms. Dewhurst lived on a farm in South Salem, in upstate New York, with
her companion of the last 16 years, the Broadway producer Ken
Marsolais. The farm's population also includes eight cats, two dogs,
one goat and a parrot. "The farm," Ms. Dewhurst wrote a few years ago,
"is my eye in the storm, my sanity, my safety, my knowledge that there
is a place that I do exist, that is my home."
In addition to her sons, she is survived by two grandchildren. No
public service is planned.
DIVERSE ROLES, MAJOR AND MINOR
Theater
The Taming of the Shrew, 1956
Children of Darkness, 1958 Antony and Cleopatra, 1959, 1963 Caligula,
1960 All the Way Home, 1961 Desire Under the Elms, 1963 Ballad of the
Sad Cafe, 1963 More Stately Mansions, 1967 Hello and Goodbye, 1969
Mourning Becomes Electra, 1973 A Moon for the Misbegotten, 1974 Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 1977 You Can't Take It With You, 1983 My
Gene, 1987 Ah, Wilderness!, 1988 Long Day's Journey Into Night, 1988
AND THOSE SHE LEFT BEHIND
Television
Anne of Avonlea Anne of Green Gables As Is Between Two Women The
Crucible Lantern Hill A Moon for the Misbegotten Murphy Brown No Exit
The Price The Women's Room
Films
The Nun's Story, 1959 Man on a String, 1960 A Fine Madness, 1963 The
Last Run, 1971 Cowboys, 1972 McQ, 1974 Annie Hall, 1977 Ice Castles,
1978 When a Stranger Calls, 1979 Final Assignment, 1980 Tribute, 1980
The Dead Zone, 1983 Dying Young, 1991
---
Photo: Loading Image...
---
An Appreciation;
Dewhurst: An Earth Mother Bigger Than Life;
The Actress Made Her Characters Forceful Yet Understanding;
Imparting The Image Of A Secure Refuge In A Storm
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (August 24th 1991) ~
By Shelia Benson, Critic at Large
If the words Earth Mother ever applied, they clung to Colleen
Dewhurst, like fresh loam to garden boots. The Tony- and Emmy-winning
actress died Thursday night in her Westchester, N.Y., home surrounded
by her children and grandchildren.
That image came, in part, from the roles in the theater with her
personal stamp, towering Eugene O'Neill matriarchs and misbegotten New
England farm women, and the young widow in James Agee's "A Death in
the Family." And it came partly from her voice, which one observer
said sounded as though she had eaten cigarettes her life long, and
partly from a sense she gave of being the rock, the safe harbor, the
one secure refuge in a storm.
But more than anything, on the stage and especially on screen and in a
way that was unique, Dewhurst projected an enveloping sense of
understanding of the world and its frailties. It seemed to come from a
knowledge of who she was: unshy, forceful, opinionated, a gutsy,
ribald 5-foot-8 woman who could seem 6 feet tall onstage and who was
congenitally unsuited to roles with the slightest equivocation about
them.
We have too few women like that in films. Regrettably, there is not
much call for them.
Dewhurst's most recent role, in "Dying Young," in which she appeared
with Campbell Scott, one of her two sons by actor George C. Scott, was
a decent enough one. She played a savvy, earthy Mendocino winery owner
who had outlived three husbands. But, by and large, film never made
the use of Dewhurst that it could have. Women with a strong sense of
themselves seem more intimidating than they should to today's
filmmakers.
Television did better by her, not only bringing some of her finest
stage roles to mass audiences, including "A Moon for the Misbegotten,"
but also memorable roles in the miniseries "Anne of Green Gables."
She got widespread attention for her role as Avery Brown, Murphy
Brown's salty mother, for which she won an Emmy in 1989 and for which
she is nominated again in the non-televised segment of the awards
ceremony scheduled for tonight.
It is wrenching, on the morning after her death, to hear her voice on
an Amtrak commercial; those cello tones unmistakable.
In one of the many times she provided voice-over for a film, in "The
Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War," she
read the words of Dolores Ibarruri, the Loyalist's fiery "La
Pasionaria." Actress and role could not have been more perfectly
matched.
---
Photo: Loading Image...
---
FROM: The Independent (August 24th 1991) ~
By David Shipman
Colleen Dewhurst, actress, born Montreal 3 June 1926, married 1947
James Vickery (marriage dissolved 1959), 1960, 1967 George C .Scott
(two sons; marriages dissolved 1965, 1972), died White Plains NY 22
August 1991.
Colleen Dewhurst was one of those strong, capable actresses whose face
was not quite right for the screen - a fact which did not bother her
even remotely, as she was a Broadway star with a clutch of awards and
also some for her television work.
Among her intermittent movie appearances are: The Nun's Story (1959),
as a mental patient who attacks Audrey Hepburn; A Fine Madness (1966),
as one of the doctors trying to help Sean Connery,
poet-turned-carpet-cleaner; Annie Hall (1977), as that lady's mother;
Ice Castles (1979), as an eccentric skating-rink instructor. She made
much from two supporting roles with John Wayne, in The Cowboys (1972),
as the local school-marm who was also his mistress, and ''McQ''
(1973), as a blowsy police contact who takes him to bed without
answering his question, ''Don't you know any younger men?''
She had leading roles in two of her later films, both attempts at
superior horror movies: When a Stranger Calls (1979), as a middle-
aged lady picked up by psychopathic mental patient, and David
Cronenberg's The Dead Zone (1983), as the wife of a psychic deputy
sheriff. Certainly to be mentioned among her films is The Last Run
(1971), in which she played the one whore in a Portuguese fishing
village, servicing (inter alios) George C. Scott. Also in the cast was
Trish Van Devere, the much-younger actress who succeeded her as Mrs
Scott.
Dewhurst was married twice to that flamboyant actor; she also made
headlines because she was the president of Actors' Equity at the time
it opposed the casting on ethnic grounds of Jonathan Powell in the
Broadway production of Miss Saigon.
In New York her name was often associated with the plays of Eugene
O'Neill, from her debut as one of the neighbours in Desire Under the
Elms in 1952. She and Scott played the leads in another revival of
this drama, in 1963, which brought her an Obie (the off-Broadway award
for excellence).
She won a Tony for her performance in A Moon for the Misbegotten in
1965 and stole the notices from Ingrid Bergman two years later, when
they played the posthumous More Stately Mansions. She also played
Christine in a revival of Mourning Becomes Electra in 1973. Her last
Broadway appearances were in 1988, in a repertory of two O'Neill
plays, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and his only comedy, Ah,
Wilderness!. The year before that she had starred in a one-woman play
about his wife, Carlotta Monterey.
Among the classical roles Dewhurst played were Kate in The Taming of
the Shrew, which brought her her first Obie in 1957, Mrs Squeamish in
The Country Wife, Shakespeare's Cleopatra in 1963 and Gertrude in
Hamlet in 1972.
She won her first Tony for All the Way Home, Tad Mosel's adaptation of
James Agee's novel A Death in the Family, and she appeared with
distinction in another dramatised novel, Edward Albee's version of
Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. She was a natural for
the role of Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which
she originally played on tour in 1965. More recently she did it in New
York, where a revival of You Can't Take It With You showed her equally
adept at comedy.
Television leaves us a kinder memory of her subtle skills than movies
- and a more plentiful one. She won three Emmys - for a mini-series
Murphy Brown, in which she was Candice Bergen's mother; Those She Left
Behind; and Between Two Women, as the dominating mother-in-law of
Farrah Fawcett. British televiewers may recall her in the mini series,
The Blue and the Grey and Anne of Green Gables
Her son Campbell Scott stars opposite Julia Roberts in Dying Young, as
the young man with leukaemia who is nursed by her. Colleen Dewhurst
had a supporting role as a wise, earthy owner of a vineyard and when
the film opens here shortly we shall be permitted a last look at a
major talent.
---
Photos:
Loading Image...
Loading Image...
Colleen Dewhurst in art:
You Can't Take It With You
Loading Image...
(w/Jason Robards, James Coco & Tammy Grimes)