Maureen Stapleton, the acclaimed stage, screen and television character actress who won an Academy Award for her supporting role in the 1981 movie “Reds,” died Monday. She was 80.
Ms. Stapleton, a longtime smoker, died of complications from respiratory ailments at her home in Lenox, Mass., according to her daughter, Katharine Allentuck Bambery. She had been ill for about two years.
Ms. Stapleton once noted that her friend Marilyn Monroe, a fellow Actor’s Studio member whose talent she admired, was not taken seriously as an actress because of her beauty.
“I never had that problem,” Ms. Stapleton said. “People looked at me on stage and said, `. . . that broad better be able to act.'”
During her more than 50-year career, she was known as an outstanding character actress who excelled in dramatic and comedic roles.
Her breakthrough role came in 1951, when she played the grieving, love-struck Sicilian-American widow, Serafina delle Rose, in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ “The Rose Tattoo.” The role earned Ms. Stapleton her first Tony Award.
“On stage, you couldn’t take your eyes off her,” actor-comedian Dom DeLuise, a longtime friend, said Monday. “She was a grand actress.”
Among Ms. Stapleton’s many Broadway credits are Lillian Hellman’s “Toys in the Attic” and Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” and “The Gingerbread Lady,” for which she won her second Tony in 1971.
“I just loved her,” Simon said Monday. “She was just a wonderful person to work with and personally she had the most marvelous sense of humor. I remember doing `Plaza Suite’ with George C. Scott, who’s a great actor and sometimes difficult to deal with. But she knew how to calm him down.”
Ms. Stapleton was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress in her first film role–as a frustrated wife who seduces a cub reporter played by Montgomery Clift in “Lonelyhearts,” the 1958 film version of Nathanael West’s novel.
She also received Oscar nominations for her performances in “Airport” (1970) and Woody’s Allen’s “Interiors” (1978).
In Warren Beatty’s epic “Reds,” she portrayed anarchist-writer Emma Goldman. Asked backstage by a reporter whether she expected to win the Oscar, the always-candid Ms. Stapleton replied: “Yes, because I’m old and tired and I lost three times before.”
Ms. Stapleton, who appeared frequently in television showcases such as “Studio One” and “Playhouse 90” in the 1950s, won an Emmy for her role in “Among the Paths to Eden” in 1967.
She also won an Emmy nomination in the title role of “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom,” opposite Charles Durning. In that 1975 TV movie, she played a lonely widow who finds romance with a letter carrier in a local dance hall.
One of two children, Ms. Stapleton was born in Troy, N.Y., to a working-class family of Irish descent. During her early years, she endured fights between her mother and her alcoholic father, who deserted the family when Ms. Stapleton was 5 and later, she recounted in her 1995 autobiography, “A Hell of a Life,” molested her.
She found frequent escape at the movies, which fueled her ambition to become an actress.
She made her Broadway debut in 1946, with a walk-on part as a village girl in a revival of Sean O’Casey’s “The Playboy of the Western World.” She graduated to better roles and joined the Actors Studio, whose members included Marlon Brando.
Offstage, Ms. Stapleton has been described as being feisty, boisterous, prone to cursing and having a bellowing laugh.
In her autobiography, she was frank about her strengths and weaknesses, which included heavy drinking (although never while performing) and a string of phobias, including fear of flying, elevators and heights.
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Career glance
A partial list of film, television and theater roles for actress Maureen Stapleton:
MOVIES:
Living and Dining, 2003
Addicted to Love, 1997
The Last Good Time, 1994
Passed Away, 1992
Made in Heaven, 1987
The Money Pit, 1986
Cocoon, 1985
Johnny Dangerously, 1984
Reds, 1981
Interiors, 1978
Airport, 1970
Bye Bye Birdie, 1963
Lonelyhearts, 1958
TELEVISION:
Miss Rose White, 1992
Last Wish, 1992
Private Sessions, 1985
Alice in Wonderland, 1983
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1976
Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, 1975
Car 54, Where are You, 1961
Playhouse 90, 1959
Kraft Television Theater, 1958
Goodyear Television Playhouse, 1953
THEATER:
The Gingerbread Lady, 1971
The Glass Menagerie, 1965
Plaza Suite, 1968
Toys in the Attic, 1960
Orpheus Descending, 1957
The Rose Tattoo, 1951
The Playboy of the Western World, 1946
Sources: www.imbdb.com, www.collectorspost.com
–Associated Press
