Barbara Angie Rose Baxley (January 1, 1923 – June 7, 1990) was an American actress and singer.

Early life

Barbara Baxley was born on January 1, 1923, in

Porterville, California Porterville is a city in the San Joaquin Valley, in Tulare County, California, United States. It is part of the Visalia-Porterville metropolitan statistical area. Since its incorporation in 1902, the city's population has grown as it annexed n ...

, the daughter of Emma (née Tyler) and Bert Baxley and sister to Helen Baxley. She acted for six years in productions of schools and Little Theaters before she had her first professional role.

Career

A life member of the

Actors Studio The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights at 432 West 44th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was founde ...

, Baxley also studied acting under the tutelage of

Sanford Meisner Sanford Meisner (August 31, 1905 – February 2, 1997) was an American actor and acting teacher who developed an approach to acting instruction that is now known as the Meisner technique. While Meisner was exposed to method acting at the Grou ...

at the prestigious

Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre is a full-time professional conservatory for actors in New York City. First operational from 1915 to 1927, the school re-opened in 1928 and has been active ever since. It is the birthplace of th ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Her first film was '' East of Eden'', where she portrayed Adam Trask's obnoxious nurse at the end of the film. In 1961, she was nominated for a

Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual c ...

for Best Actress (Dramatic) for her performance in the Broadway production of

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...

's comedy '' Period of Adjustment''. She appeared in Chekhov's '' The Three Sisters'' and

Neil Simon Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He has received mo ...

's ''

Plaza Suite ''Plaza Suite'' is a comedy play by Neil Simon. Plot The play is composed of three acts, each involving different characters but all set in Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel. The first act, ''Visitor From Mamaroneck'', introduces the a ...

'' as well as the 1960s Broadway musical ''

She Loves Me ''She Loves Me'' is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock, and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. The musical is the third adaptation of the 1937 play '' Parfumerie'' by Hungarian playwright Miklós László, following the 1940 ...

'', which co-starred Jack Cassidy,

Barbara Cook Barbara Cook (October 25, 1927 – August 8, 2017) was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals '' Plain and Fancy'' (1955), ''Candide'' (1956) and ''The Music Man'' ( ...

and Daniel Massey. She also starred in the 1976 Broadway play '' Best Friend''. Baxley appeared in supporting roles in many television series of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. She played a wife who had her rodeo performer husband, played by

Lee Van Cleef Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. (January 9, 1925 – December 16, 1989) was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly 40 years, but is best known as a star of Italian Spaghetti Westerns, parti ...

, murdered in the crime drama series '' Richard Diamond, Private Detective'', starring David Janssen. She appeared in a 1958 '' Perry Mason'' episode, "The Case of the Gilded Lily", as Enid Griffin and she played the role of Cora Wheeler in the original '' Twilight Zone'' episode of "Mute". Baxley played two different characters in two episodes of ''

Have Gun – Will Travel ''Have Gun – Will Travel'' is an American Western series that was produced and originally broadcast by CBS on both television and radio from 1957 through 1963. The television version of the series starring Richard Boone was rated number t ...

'', starring Richard Boone. She also played roles on '' Where the Heart Is'' and '' Another World'', two daytime

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio drama ...

s. She further played on an episode of '' The Fugitive'' as the one-armed man's girlfriend. She appeared in six episodes of ''

Alfred Hitchcock Presents ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' is an American television anthology series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, aired on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965. It features dramas, thrillers and mysteries. Between 1962 and 1965 it was r ...

''. A memorable Baxley performance came in a 1973 episode of '' Hawaii Five-O'' entitled "One Big Happy Family". She portrayed the matriarch of a serial-killing Southern family. She is perhaps better known for the role of Lady Pearl, the feisty wife of country music icon Haven Hamilton ( Henry Gibson) in

Robert Altman Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New ...

's film ''

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and th ...

'' (1975) and as the mother of

Sally Field Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress. She has received many awards and nominations, including two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Fe ...

's character in '' Norma Rae'' (1979). Baxley was a close friend of musician

Dave Brubeck David Warren Brubeck (; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Often regarded as a foremost exponent of cool jazz, Brubeck's work is characterized by unusual time signatures and superimposing contrasti ...

and his wife; according to him, Baxley was more like a member of the family.Ted Pankins, ''An Interview with Dave Brubeck'', July 23, 2007 He later confirmed that Baxley was a liberal Democrat, an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, a woman who always put the needs and well-being of others before her own self, and that when she died, he and his wife, Iola, not only handled her funeral arrangements but also buried her in the same cemetery next to their own plots so that they all could be together as one in death, same as in life, because their bond held such a strong connection.

Death

Baxley died at age 67 on June 7, 1990, at her home in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, of an apparent heart attack. She is buried at Umpawaug Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.

Filmography

References

External links

* * * * *
Barbara Baxley Papers, 1911-1988
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

New York Public Library blog about Barbara Baxley and William Inge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baxley, Barbara 1923 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American actresses 20th-century American singers Actresses from California American film actresses American musical theatre actresses American stage actresses American television actresses People from Porterville, California 20th-century American women singers California Democrats Connecticut Democrats New York (state) Democrats American atheists