Colleen Dewhurst

At 67 years old, Colleen Dewhurst has this physical status:

Colleen Rose Dewhurst, born in 1924 to 1991, was a Canadian-American actress.

She is best known for stage roles, and for a brief period of time as "the Queen of Off-Broadway."

"I went so quickly from one Off-Broadway to the next that I was known as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway' in Dewhurst's autobiography.'

This award was not due to my brilliance, but rather because the majority of the plays I was in closed after a run of anywhere from one night to two weeks.

"I'd then go straight into another world." Eugene O'Neill's on the stage was a well-known interpreter of his work, and her career included film, early dramas on live television, and Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival.

One of her last appearances was playing Marilla Cuthbert in Kevin Sullivan's television adaptations of Anne of Green Gables and her reprisal of the role in the upcoming television series Road to Avonlea (marketed as Avonlea in the United States).

Dewhurst received two Tony Awards and four Emmy Awards for her stage and television appearances.

Early life

Dewhurst was born in Montreal, Quebec, on June 3rd, 1924, and the only child of Frances Marie (née Woods) and Ferdinand Augustus "Fred" Dewhurst. Fred Dewhurst, the owner of a chain of confectionery stores, was a well-known celebrity in Canada, where he had played football with the Ottawa Rough Riders. The family was naturalized as American citizens before 1940. Colleen Dewhurst's mother was a Christian Scientist, a belief Colleen Dewhurst embraced.

The Dewhursts immigrated to Massachusetts in 1928 or 1929, remaining in Dorchester, Auburndale, and West Newton, Massachusetts. They later moved to New York City and then to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. Dewhurst attended Whitefish Bay High School for her first two years of high school, then to Shorewood High School for her junior year, and graduated from Riverside High School in Milwaukee in 1942. Her parents were divorced about this time. Dewhurst attended Milwaukee-Downer College for two years and then moved to New York City to pursue an acting career.

Personal life and final years

Colleen Dewhurst was married to James Vickery from 1947 to 1960. George C. Scott was married and divorced twice by her. Alexander Scott and actor Campbell Scott were both sons, and Campbell was co-starring Campbell in Dying Young (1991), one of her last film appearances before she died in August 1991.

She and her partner, Ken Marsolais, lived on a farm in South Salem, New York, for the first year of her life. They also lived on Prince Edward Island, Canada, during the summer.

Maureen Stapleton wrote about Dewhurst:

Dewhurst's Christian Science beliefs led her to her inability to tolerate any sort of surgical care. She died of cervical cancer at the age of 67 at her South Salem home in 1991. She was cremated and her ashes were given to family and friends; no public service was planned.

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Career

One of her most significant stage roles was in the 1974 Broadway revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten as Josie Hogan, for which she won a Tony Award. She previously won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in 1961 for All the Way Home. She later played Katharina in a 1956 production of Taming of the Shrew for Joseph Papp. She (as recounted in her posthumous obituary in collaboration with Tom Viola) wrote:

She played Shakespeare's Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth for Papp and years later, Gertrude in a production of Hamlet at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.

She appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Night Fever in 1965 and with Ingrid Bergman in More Stately Mansions on Broadway in 1967. José Quintero directed her in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Mourning Becomes Electra. She appeared in Edward Albee's adaptation of Carson McCullers' Ballad of the Sad Cafe and as Martha in a Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, opposite Ben Gazzara which Albee directed.

She appeared in 1962 as Joanne Novak in the episode "I Don't Belong in a White-Painted House" in the medical drama The Eleventh Hour, starring Wendell Corey and Jack Ging. Dewhurst appeared opposite her then husband, Scott, in a 1971 television adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Price, on Hallmark Hall of Fame, and an anthology series. There is another television recording of them together when she played Elizabeth Proctor to the unfaithful John in Miller's The Crucible (with Tuesday Weld). In 1977, Woody Allen cast her in his film Annie Hall as Annie's mother.

In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'. This title was not due to my brilliance, but, rather, because most of the plays I was in closed after a run of anywhere from one night to two weeks. I would then move immediately into another."

In 1972 she played a madam, Mrs. Kate Collingwood, in The Cowboys (1972), which starred John Wayne. Dewhurst also appeared with Wayne in the 1974 film McQ. She was the first actress to share a love scene with Wayne in bed. In 1985, she played the role of Marilla Cuthbert in Kevin Sullivan's adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel Anne of Green Gables and reprised the role in 1987's Anne of Avonlea (also known as Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel) and in several episodes of Kevin Sullivan's Road to Avonlea.

Dewhurst was on hiatus from Road to Avonlea when she died in 1991. Sullivan Productions was unaware she was terminally ill, so her portrayal of Marilla ended posthumously. This was accomplished by shooting new scenes with actress Patricia Hamilton acting as a body double for Dewhurst and by recycling parts of scenes from Anne of Green Gables, Road to Avonlea, and using Dewhurst's death scene as Hepzibah in Sullivan's production of Lantern Hill. The latter was a 1990 television film based on L.M. Montgomery's Jane of Lantern Hill.

During 1989 and 1990, she appeared in a supporting role on the television series Murphy Brown playing Avery Brown, the feisty mother of Candice Bergen's title character; this role earned her two Emmy Awards, the second being awarded posthumously. Dewhurst won a total of two Tony Awards and four Emmy Awards for her stage and television work. Season 4, Episode 6 entitled "Full Circle" was the Murphy Brown episode filmed shortly after her death and dedicated to her memory.

In a review of Dewhurst’s final film role as Ruth in Bed and Breakfast (1991), Emanuel Levy wrote “Bed and Breakfast is the kind of small, intimate picture that actors revere. The stunningly sensual Dewhurst, in one of her last screen roles, dominates every scene she is in, making the lusty and down-to-earth Ruth at once credible and enchanting.“

Dewhurst was president of the Actors' Equity Association from 1985 until her death. She was the first national president to die in the office.

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