Julie Harris Biography

Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (December 2, 1925 – August 24, 2013) was an American stage, screen, and television actress. She won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She was a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame and received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.

Early life and education

Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. (née Smith), a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which later merged with two others to form the University Liggett School. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School. As a teenager, she also trained at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp in Colorado with Charlotte Perry, a mentor who encouraged Harris to apply to the Yale School of Drama, which she soon attended for a year.

Career

Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon deWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later adapted as the musical Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles). Harris repeated her stage role in the film version of I Am a Camera (1955). She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (also 1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper (1966), and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).

Harris played the ethereal Eleanor Lance in The Haunting (1963), director Robert Wise's screen adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson, a classic film of the horror genre. Another cast member recalled Harris maintaining a social distance from the other actors while not on set, later explaining that she had done so as a method of emphasizing the alienation from the other characters experienced by her character in the film.

She reprised her Tony-winning role as Mary Todd Lincoln in 1973's play The Last of Mrs. Lincoln in the film version, which appeared in 1976. Another noteworthy film appearance was in the World War II drama The Hiding Place (1975).

Harris received ten Tony Award nominations, more than any other performer. She also held the record for most Tony wins (five) until Angela Lansbury tied her in 2009. Lansbury and Audra McDonald are the only other performers to have had five acting Tony Award wins. In 1966, Harris won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Her Broadway credits include The Playboy of the Western World, Macbeth, The Member of the Wedding, A Shot in the Dark, Skyscraper, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Forty Carats, The Glass Menagerie, A Doll's House and The Gin Game.

Of particular note is her Tony-winning performance in The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman play (written by William Luce and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly) based on the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson. She received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play. She first performed the play in 1976 and subsequently appeared in other solo shows, including Luce's Bronte.

On television, she was well known for her role as Lilimae Clements, the mother of Valene Ewing (played by Joan Van Ark) on the CBS nighttime soap opera Knots Landing. The role was as a recurring character from 1980 to 1981 and as a series regular from 1981-1987. For her television work, Harris had won three Emmy Awards and had been nominated eleven times. One of her most famous television roles was as Queen Victoria, in the 1961 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Laurence Housman's Victoria Regina, for which she won an Emmy. Earlier, also for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, she starred as Nora Helmer opposite Christopher Plummer in A Doll's House (1959), a 90-minute television adaptation of Ibsen's play. She made more appearances in leading roles on the Hallmark program than any other actress, also appearing in two different adaptations of the play Little Moon of Alban.

On December 5, 2005, she was named a Kennedy Center Honoree. At a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush remarked, "It's hard to imagine the American stage without the face, the voice, and the limitless talent of Julie Harris. She has found happiness in her life's work, and we thank her for sharing that happiness with the whole world."

Later years

Harris continued to work until her death, recently narrating five historical documentaries by Christopher Seufert and Mooncusser Films, as well as being active as a director on the board of the independent Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater. She had also done extensive voice work for documentary maker Ken Burns, in doing the voices of Emily Warren Roebling in Brooklyn Bridge, Ann Lee in The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God, Susan B. Anthony in Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and most notably as Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut for Burns' 1990 series The Civil War.

In the summer of 2008, Ms. Harris appeared on stage again in her hometown of Chatham as Nanny in a Monomoy Theater production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Personal life

Harris lived in Chatham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts and until recently, maintained a residence in the Detroit area near to where she grew up. Thrice divorced, she had one son, Peter Gurian. Harris battled breast cancer, a severe fall requiring surgery, a stroke in 2001, and a second stroke in 2010.

Harris died on August 24, 2013, of congestive heart failure at her home in West Chatham, Massachusetts. She was 87 years old. She was survived by her son, Peter. Ben Brantley, theater critic for The New York Times, considered her "the actress who towered most luminously [...], rather like a Statue of Liberty for Broadway." Alec Baldwin, with whom she appeared in Knots Landing, praised her in a tribute in the Huffington Post. "Her voice was like rainfall. Her eyes connected directly to and channeling the depths of her powerful and tender heart. Her talent, a gift from God." On August 28, 2013, Broadway theaters dimmed their lights for one minute in honor of Harris.

Filmography

Television

• Actors Studio (4 episodes, 1948–1949)
• Starlight Theatre as Bernice (1 episode, 1951)
• Goodyear Television Playhouse (2 episodes, 1951–1953)
• The United States Steel Hour as Shivawn (1 episode, 1955)
• The Good Fairy (1956) as Lu
• The Lark (1957) as Joan of Arc
• Little Moon of Alban (1958) as Brigid Mary
• Johnny Belinda (1958) as Belinda
• A Doll's House (1959) as Nora Helmer
• Sunday Showcase as Francesca (1 episode, 1960)
• Play of the Week (1 episode, 1961)
• The Heiress (1961) as Catherine Sloper
• The DuPont Show of the Month as Julia (2 episodes, 1960–1961)
• The Power and the Glory (1961) as Maria
• Victoria Regina (1961) as Queen Victoria
• Pygmalion (1963) as Eliza Doolittle
• Little Moon of Alban (1964) as Brigid Mary
• Kraft Suspense Theatre as Lucy Bram (1 episode, 1964)
• The Holy Terror (1965) as Florence Nightingale
• Rawhide as Emma Teall (1 episode, 1965)
• Laredo as Annamay (1 episode, 1965)
• Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre as Isobel Cain (1 episode, 1966)
• Anastasia (1967) as Anastasia
• Garrison's Gorillas as Therese (1 episode, 1968)
• Run for Your Life as Lucrece Lawrence (1 episode, 1968)
• Tarzan as Charity Jones (4 episodes, 1967–1968)
• Daniel Boone as Faith (1 episode, 1968)
• Bonanza as Sarah Carter (1 episode, 1968)
• The Big Valley as Jennie Hall (1 episode, 1968)
• Journey to the Unknown as Leona Gillings (1 episode, 1969)
• House on Greenapple Road (1970) as Leona Miller
• The Name of the Game as Ruth Harmon (2 episodes, 1969–1970)
• How Awful About Allan (1970) as Katherine
• The Virginian as Jenny (1 episode, 1971)
• Home for the Holidays (1972) as Elizabeth Hall Morgan
• Thicker Than Water as Nellie Paine (9 episodes, 1973)
• Medical Center as Helen (1 episode, 1973)
• Columbo: Any Old Port in a Storm as Karen Fielding (1 episode, 1973)
• Hawkins as Janet Hubbard (1 episode, 1973)
• The Evil Touch as Aunt Carrie (2 episodes, 1973)
• The Greatest Gift (1974) as Elizabeth Holvak
• The Family Holvak as Elizabeth Holvak (10 episodes, 1975)
• Match Game as herself (1975) (5 daily episodes & 1 syndicated episode)
• The Belle of Amherst (1976) as Emily Dickinson
• The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1976) as Mary Todd Lincoln
• Stubby Pringle's Christmas (1978) as Georgia Henderson
• Backstairs at the White House as Mrs. Helen 'Nellie' Taft (1 episode, 1979)
• Tales of the Unexpected as Mrs. Bixby (2 episodes, 1979)
• The Gift (1979) as Anne Devlin
• Family Ties as Margaret Hollings (1 episode, 1986)
• The Love Boat as Irene Culver (1 episode, 1987)
• Knots Landing as Lilimae Clements (165 episodes, 1980–1987)
• The Woman He Loved (1988) as Alice
• Too Good to Be True (1988) as Margaret Berent
• The Christmas Wife (1988) as Iris
• Single Women Married Men (1989) as Lucille Frankyl
• The Civil War as Mary Chestnut (9 episodes, 1990)
• They've Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping (1993) as Odessa Ray
• When Love Kills: The Seduction of John Hearn (1993) as Alice Hearn
• Scarlett as Eleanor Butler (1 episode, 1994)
• One Christmas (1994) as Sook
• Lucifer's Child (1995) as Isak Dinesen
• Secrets (1995) as Caroline Phelan
• Little Surprises (1996) as Ethel
• The Christmas Tree (1996) as Sister Anthony
• Ellen Foster (1997) as Leonora Nelson
• The Outer Limits as Hera (1 episode, 1998)
• Love Is Strange (1999) as Sylvia McClain

Film

• The Member of the Wedding (1952) as Frances 'Frankie' Addams
• East of Eden (1955) as Abra
• I Am a Camera (1955) as Sally Bowles
• The Truth About Women (1957) as Helen Cooper
• Sally's Irish Rogue (1958) as Sally Hamil
• Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) as Grace Miller
• The Haunting (1963) as Eleanor 'Nell' Lance
• Hamlet (1964) as Ophelia
• Harper (1966) as Betty Fraley
• You're a Big Boy Now (1966) as Miss Nora Thing
• Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) as Alison Langdon
• Journey to Midnight (1968) as Leona Gillings
• The Split (1968) as Gladys
• The People Next Door (1970) as Gerrie Mason
• The Hiding Place (1975) as Betsie ten Boom
• Voyage of the Damned (1976) as Alice Fienchild
• The Bell Jar (1979) as Mrs. Greenwood
• Brontë (1983) as Charlotte Brontë
• Crimewave (1985) (uncredited)
• Nutcracker: The Motion Picture (1986) as Clara (voice)
• Gorillas in the Mist (1988) as Roz Carr
• HouseSitter (1992) as Edna Davis
• The Dark Half (1993) as Reggie Delesseps
• Carried Away (1996) as Joseph's Mother
• Bad Manners (1997) as Professor Harper
• Passage to Paradise (1998) as Martha McGraw
• The First of May (1999) as Carlotta
• The Way Back Home (2006) as Jo McMillen
• The Golden Boys (2008) as Melodeon Player
• The Lightkeepers (2009) as Mrs. Deacon