Oh, What a Character! Part Twelve: Give Pearce a Chance.

When the long-running sitcom Bewitched (1964-1972) segued into syndication the year after its cancellation, a whole new generation of fans began to discover it during the afternoon and early evening hours. However, since black & white was perceived to be passe and less desirable (except in cases such as I Love Lucy, Perry Mason and The Addams Family, to name a few), many TV stations chose to air mostly (or only) the color episodes of seasons three through eight. Due to this, a great many youngsters missed out on the chance to witness one of the most side-splitting creations ever to hit the tube: the role of Gladys Kravitz as portrayed by Alice Pearce. They tended to be far more familiar with the second Gladys, Sandra Gould.

Before we get to that, though, we're going to start at the beginning, when a little girl named Alicia Pearce was born (as an only child) to a bank vice president and his wife in New York City on October 16^th, 1917. Her father's business occasioned the family to reside in various parts of Europe, where Pearce was educated. The sporadic movement from school to school (country to country!) created an ease with strangers while her solitude as the only youth at home sparked imagination.

Returning to “The Big Apple” as a teen, Pearce then attended Sarah Lawrence College where she studied until graduation in 1940. She (now going by the abbreviated Alice) next began to find work in summer stock theatre and parlayed a rubber face (unique and not conventionally attractive) into many well-received nightclub gigs. Eventually, her riotous comedic skills led her to a featured part in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1943. (Another face in this crowd belonged to John Lund, seen to her right in the front row, who went on to minor fame in Hollywood.)

Several months after the closure of New Faces, Pearce won a featured role in the 1944 Broadway production of On the Town, a Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green musical about three sailors on leave in New York, each finding love along the way. Pearce's comic role was of a sniffle-ridden blind date (not pictured) to one of the sailors who winds up landing a wealthy judge by the end. Though it was a non-singing part, it was memorable and would lead to considerable success for her in the not-too-distant future.

The show closed in 1946 and she proceeded to entertain in nightclubs, many engagements arranged by the new love in her life, songwriter John Rox. (Rox penned “It's a Big Wide Wonderful World” and “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”) The two were married in 1948, a year in which she appeared twice more on Broadway in Look, Ma, I'm Dancin' and Small Wonder. Both On the Town and Look, Ma had starred the diminutive Nancy Walker and the two would work together again later.

In 1949, Pearce even hosted her own brief TV variety series, a fifteen-minute mix of comedy and music that aired on Friday nights for a couple of months. However, far bigger things were in store. That same year, MGM was putting together the movie version of On the Town, to be co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. While studio chief Louis B. Mayer disliked the original play and had much of it reworked, Kelly was spellbound by Pearce and insisted on using her in the movie. As a result, she was the sole holdover from the Broadway production to be featured in On the Town (1949.)

The role of her character's ultimate beau, Judge Pitkin W. Bridgework (which I happened to have played myself on a local stage!) was eliminated in the movie, but Pearce was still given a fair amount of screen time and made a strong impression as the perennially-sniffling blind date.

Strangely, considering the popularity of On the Town and the effectiveness of her performance, it would be three years before her next movie. However, she was hardly idle. She was part of the original cast of Carol Channing's Broadway hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (she's seen here at a cast album recording session) and began to appear on more television such as Lux Video Theatre and Goodyear Playhouse.

1952 brought her second film, The Belle of New York, in which she played the friend of Vera-Ellen (an On the Town costar), who was the love interest of Fred Astaire, thus she wound up working alongside Gene Kelly in her first movie and Fred Astaire in her second, winning comic points both times.

Still a viable Broadway performer, she worked in The Grass Harp and then was a replacement cast member of John Murray Anderson's Almanac, a successful, star-studded revue. Among her TV work during this time was a recurring role on the live series Jamie (which starred young Brandon De Wilde), a guest spot on The Goldbergs as a guest at a weight loss farm (shown here) and various teleplays alongside actors such as Gene Lockhart, Estelle Winwood, Cedric Hardwicke and Basil Rathbone.

In 1955, she worked on Broadway once more in Tallulah Bankhead's Dear Charles, then appeared in another movie, How to be Very, Very Popular, a college-set musical starring Betty Grable and Sheree North as runaway showgirls, with Pearce as a kooky housemother (shown here with Tommy Noonan.) The film was not a success (Grable never made another one), but Pearce's career as a valued character actress continued.

In 1956, she won the role of an amusing maid in a Broadway revival of Noel Coward's Fallen Angels (again starring Nancy Walker.) She also appeared in The Opposite Sex, a musical remake of The Women (1939), in which she adeptly played the gossip-spreading manicurist Olga, who sets the main storyline of the movie in motion with her tales of adultery.

1957 brought a horrible shock when her beloved husband John died of a heart attack at only age fifty. She returned to the Broadway stage in Copper and Brass (a short-lived musical which, again, starred Nancy Walker! The two are seen together on stage in this photo at right.) and as a replacement in Bells Are Ringing, taking over Jean Stapleton's role in the Judy Holliday musical.

The stage manager of Bells Are Ringing was a man named Paul Davis, who became a close friend of the recently-widowed Pearce. Before long, a romance developed between them and eventually, several years later, they wed (in 1964.) In the meantime, she worked on an episode of The Twilight Zone (as seen here) with Dean Jagger as a fellow resident in a rooming house and appeared twice on Shirley Temple's Storybook (once as The Goblin Queen and costarring Mary Wickes), among other projects.

A close friendship with actor/dancer-turned-photographer Cris Alexander (who'd been in On the Town with her) led to her being part of the outre and amusing portraits he supplied for the showbiz parody book Little Me (later to be augmented into a Broadway musical starring Sid Caesar.) Alexander, by the way, was the longtime partner of ballet dancer Shaun O'Brien and their lives make for an interesting read. Together for over sixty years, they died within days of one another, yet lived to be made husbands under New York's same-sex marriage laws.

Also in 1961, Pearce worked once more with Talullah Bankhead on Broadway in Midgie Purvis, a short-lived play by Mary Chase (the author of Harvey) and then made her final appearance on The Great White Way in Sail Away, a Noel Coward shipboard musical starring Elaine Stritch, which underwent many changes along the way. In 1962, she played a nurse to wheelchair-bound Angela Cartwright in the movie Lad: A Dog.

1963 brought a spate of supporting film roles including My Six Loves (with Debbie Reynolds), Tammy and the Doctor (with Sandra Dee) and The Thrill of It All (with Doris Day.) These were interspersed with parts on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Donna Reed Show, Dennis the Menace (shown below with a myriad of expressions) and even The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

More film work was to come in 1964 with Dear Heart (starring Glenn Ford and Geraldine Page), Kiss Me, Stupid (with Dean Martin and Kim Novak) and the Jerry Lewis comedy The Disorderly Orderly. In the latter film, Pearce played a chatty patient who rattles on endlessly about the details of her ailments while Lewis, a hypochondriac, begins to experience each of them in turn!

1964 brought about a new opportunity for her when she was hired to play a semi-regular role on a new TV sitcom. Bewitched focused on the newlywed relationship between a bright, but harried advertising executive (played by Dick York) and his charming, beautiful bride (Elizabeth Montgomery) who also happens to be a witch! The unusual goings on at their suburban home wind up baffling and exasperating their across-the-street nosy-neighbor Gladys Kravitz, played of course by Alice Pearce.

Paired with George Tobias as Gladys' husband Abner, Pearce was able to conduct a little witchcraft of her own, summoning goggle-eyed reactions and uproarious takes as her character kept seeing things that no one else ever seemed to witness. A common occurance in early episodes was for one of her sightings to be followed by Tobias administering a dose or two of her medicine, a tablespoonful of prescription liquid.

Many an episode of Bewitched was enlivened by a bug-eyed, slack-jawed expression from Pearce, usually accompanied by an ear-splitting screech of “Abner!!” as she scrambled to find her disbelieving husband. Invariably, whatever madness it was that she'd come upon would be either fixed, reverted or utterly absent by the time she forced him to take a look for himself.

Formulaic as these events may have been, they were funny nonetheless (though perhaps I am not the best one to assess this since I have also always found the work of Patricia Routledge uproariously funny on Keeping Up Appearances, a show which was based on repetitive situations much to the dismay of some viewers.)

There were some episodes which featured Pearce and Tobias far more than usual and she gamely rose to the challenge. However, like many other peculiar funny folk (like that series' other recurring actor Paul Lynde and like countless other supporting players on classic sitcoms), less typically equalled more in her case.

Bewitched was an instant hit and catapulted its stars into the limelight, with Pearce at last getting some widespread recognition for her comic gifts and gleefully loony body language. She found herself profiled in the pages of TV Guide (as shown here) and poked fun at herself in advertisements (such as the one for Coty lipstick below, also featuring Joey Heatherton!)

More film work also came along, with small roles in Dear Brigitte (with James Stewart, 1965), Bus Riley's Back in Town (which starred Ann-Margret, 1965) and The Glass Bottom Boat (another film with Doris Day, shown at right, 1966.) This elastic-expressioned crank with the soft chin was at the peak of success as a character actress.

However, Alice Pearce had a secret. Prior to starting work on Bewitched, she had undergone exploratory surgery and been given a dire prognosis. She had terminal ovarian cancer. Never revealing this fact, she plodded onward, with the caring assistance of her husband Paul, and proceeded to bring rib-tickling joy to millions of TV viewers.

As the show continued into its second season, Pearce became noticeably thinner. Though she'd worn wigs throughout, their bouffant quality began to engulf her and her features became drawn. It's a sad thing to see, though she still gave every single moment of her screen time everything she had, pro that she was. Ultimately, she had to give up her work on the show and scripts were hastily rewritten to have Gladys out of town visiting while Tobias' sister (Mary Grace Canfield) filled in the blanks as his temporary housekeeper.

When the show appeared for its third season (now in color), Tobias was still Abner Kravitz, but Gladys was now played by Sandra Gould. Gould had her own set of skills and charms, but was quite a different type. (The series was punctuated by these types of changes, with York's boss' wife being played by two actresses, unannounced in the storyline, and eventually York himself being replaced without fanfare when his back injuries became too unbearable to endure.)

Alice Pearce died on March 3^rd, 1966 of ovarian cancer at only age forty-eight. Prior to her death, she issued the following quote: “I feel the progress of the disease in my case is unusual because of my mental attitude. I am a supremely happy woman. I have never been beautiful, but I have been blessed with a rich career and the love of two fine men. The strength I have found in the devotion of my dear Paul is beyond measure.”

Elizabeth Montgomery and her then-husband William Asher (producer of the show, both seen at right) hired Paul Davis on to direct a couple of episodes of Bewitched in order to reignite the career he'd put on ice in order to take care of his wife and also to help keep him occupied in the lonely days that came after her passing. In one of those Underworld ironies, Davis later had a small part in that hooty, super-obscure movie we profiled once here, Dinah East (1970!)

Pearce's remarkable work on Bewitched was recognized when Emmy voters awarded her with a statuette as Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Comedy (her competition included Rose Marie of The Dick Van Dyke Show and her own Bewitched costar Agnes Moorehead.) In 1968, another Bewitched star, Marion Lorne who played Aunt Clara in the same number of episodes as Pearce played Gladys (27), won the same award... but died ten days prior to the ceremony!

Even more indicative of Pearce's enduring popularity, however, is the fact that between thirty-seven and forty-two years after her death, Alice Pearce was still winning awards! Shared with her successor Sandra Gould, she won the following TV Land awards: Nosiest Neighbor (2003), Favorite Nosy Neighbor (2005) and Neighbor You Try to Avoid (2008) for the role of hysterical Gladys Kravitz.

We applaud the comic gifts of Alice Pearce, but also salute her workmanlike professionalism under duress and her commitment to making audiences happy, even as she faced the fact that she was leaving this earth. A lesser mortal might have given up and taken to her bed at the very word “cancer” in 1964. She defined the word “trouper.”   

Oh, What a Character! Part Eleven: Let's Have a Field Day!

Today's featured actress is one who seems to have slipped through the cracks in many circles, perhaps due to some of the careworn parts she essayed or because she led a far less flashy personal life than some of her peers. This in no way changes the fact that she was one of the most hard-working, dedicated and very talented performers of her day. While she was a leading lady at the start of her career, she later morphed into a sterling character player and that's why we love her in The Underworld. We refer to Miss Betty Field.

When the pilgrim-filled Mayflower broke shore at Plymouth Rock in 1620, carrying with it John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, the couple would proceed to marry and produce a large family. One of the much later descendants of this union was a man named George Field, who would marry Katharine Lynch and, together, they would give the world Betty Field. Though Field would travel Europe and take both New York and California by storm, she remained at heart a New England girl, born in Massachusetts on February 8th, 1913 and dying in that same state sixty years later.

When George and Katharine divorced while Field was still a young girl, her mother took her on various jaunts to Spanish-speaking countries, enough to allow her to pick up the language, but in time Katharine remarried and they settled back in Massachusetts. An early interest in acting led to her being accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Art. By the time she was twenty, she was working in summer stock and even got an opportunity to trek to the West End of London for a part in She Loves Me in 1934.

That same year, she returned to the U.S. and made her Broadway debut in Page Miss Glory. She had a small role in the George Abbott production and understudied the lead. Mr. Abbott thought much of her and was able to use her in quite a few subsequent productions, one of which was 1938's highly successful What a Life. When Paramount Pictures opted to film the story in 1939, Field was one of only a couple of actors from the original play who were recruited to reprise their roles for the movie (seen here at right.)

So well-liked was she by the studio that she was signed to a seven year contract and that same year was handed the practically sole female role in the important film Of Mice and Men, opposite Burgess Meredith. The movie was based on John Steinbeck's famous novel. In it, she played Mae, the flirty, tacky, ill-fated wife of Bob Steele who befriends the towering simpleton Lon Chaney Jr., whose friend and protector is Meredith. Field seemed poised to make a serious mark in Hollywood.

Her next film was Seventeen, a teen romantic comedy starring Jackie Cooper (who had also been the lead in What a Life.) Field was now twenty-one, but either she or the studio began to shave five years from her birth date in order to turn back the hands of time and allow her to conceivably play ingenue roles with more effectiveness.


Field, a lifetime dog lover, was snapped behind the scenes playing with her canine costar.

She was paired with Fredric March in Victory (1940) based on a Joseph Conrad novel, though March had feverishly fought to have Ingrid Bergman as his costar. (Am I projecting or is there something making its presence known in Mr. March's pants?!) Field was striving for versatility in her work and would do so throughout her career. This allowed her to play a diverse range of women as her performances on stage, in the movies and, eventually, on TV continued.

1941 brought the Technicolor mountain drama The Shepherd of the Hills, a John Wayne film (his first one not in black & white) concerning animosity within a family of hill people. Directed by Henry Hathaway, she was working for and with top people in the industry and her appearance differed greatly from movie to movie. (This could also be a curse to burgeoning talent because audiences might not realize that they had seen a performer before and in that day, star identity was key.)

All during this period, whenever possible, Field was returning to New York to work on Broadway in a variety of plays, often for George Abbott. She met playwright Elmer Rice and began to fall in love. She would marry him in 1942 and work in several of his subsequent plays, some of which were constructed with her in mind. The couple had three children together.

First, she'd been a socially-reserved single girl, eschewing the Hollywood party scene, then she became a wife, working often on stage, and then a three-time mother. All of these aspects, along with her amorphous looks, helped to hamstring her chances of becoming a top name in the cinema. Somewhat forlorn, with a down-turned mouth, she nevertheless was capable of not only glamour, but sexiness as well when it was called for (see below.)

In 1941's Blues in the Night, she played the glamorous part of a big band singer who has a propensity for stirring up trouble. (She also joined Joel McCrea for The Great Moment, a period medical drama about the advent of anesthesia, for Preston Sturges, but the movie was heavily edited and shelved for two years!)

Her next role was at the opposite end of the spectrum of Blues in the Night, 1942's King's Row, for which she was lent to Warner Brothers. She played the deeply troubled childhood friend of Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan whose physician father rules her with an iron hand. Based on a then-scorching best selling novel, it was a soapy, but high-quality, examination of life in a small town riddled with secrets and problems.

Her other 1942 film, Are Husbands Necessary? is of interest because of what it eventually sparked. She and Ray Milland play spouses who become involved in comic situations and squabbles. The format was adapted for radio into a show called My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball and Richard Denning and this, of course, formed the basis for the TV series I Love Lucy, which starred Ball and her real-life husband Desi Arnaz.

Once again, Field was snapped off the set playing with a pooch (who looks awfully like Humphrey Bogart's dog, Zero.)  If you know how I adore dogs, then you know that this loving quality in Fields only adds to my affection for her.

She was heavily considered for the role of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), opposite Gary Cooper, thanks to her familiarity with Spanish language, but ultimately was considered too American in persona, so Ingrid Bergman won the part (now a considerably bigger star since the release of Intermezzo in 1939 and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1942.)

After re-teaming with Bob Cummings for one part of the occult anthology Flesh and Fantasy in 1943, she costarred once more with Fredric March in the now-campy, but nevertheless fascinating, Tomorrow the World! (1944.) In it, she plays the lovely fiance of March who, because of her Jewish heritage, is targeted by his newly-adopted son, the blatantly-Nazi grade-schooler Skip Homeier. Little blonde Homeier, in a precursor to The Bad Seed, is a German war orphan who has every intention of building up a contingent of like-minded youths and taking over America!

Next came 1945's The Southerner, a farming drama that starred Zachary Scott (of that same year's Mildred Pierce, but in a diametrically opposite sort of role) and Field as a couple facing multitudinous hardships as they attempt to grow cotton. The prestigious production was directed by Jean Renoir and, though mostly forgotten now, remains a film with many admirers.

There was a break in her movie career after this as she concentrated on bearing and raising her children along with stints on the Broadway stage. Spending as much time in New York as she was, she also began to take part in television, her debut coming in an episode of The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1948.

In 1949, she returned to the big screen after a four-year absence in The Great Gatsby, playing Daisy. Starring Alan Ladd as the title character and with a cast that included Macdonald Carey, Ruth Hussey, Barry Sullivan, Ed Begley and Shelley Winters (as Myrtle), it was considered a misfire. She'd only won the role after Gene Tierney was considered too distractingly beautiful for it and was deemed too intelligent and practical for the part. Though this version has gained more respect over the years, thanks in part to equally uneven remakes in 1974 and 2012, it slammed the lid on her movie career for quite a while.

Field, a confirmed workaholic, remained active on the stage in a variety of parts and also appeared on television in such programs as Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (as Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Raymond Massey), Robert Montgomery Presents, Goodyear Playhouse and Lux Video Theatre. Interestingly, she and her old Of Mice and Men costar Burgess Meredith replaced Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in Broadway's The Fourposter.

In 1955, six years after her previous movie, she returned to the big screen again, this time in Picnic. The star-laden story of romantic upheaval in a small town included William Holden, Cliff Robertson and Rosalind Russell among its large cast. Now forty-two, she was playing the mother of twenty year-old Kim Novak and the younger Susan Strasberg.

She would from this point on most often portray older, sometimes wiser, sometimes not, ladies in support of the stars. This was at least partly due to the fact that as an actress, Field had little to no vanity and was unconcerned with looking older, worn-down or haggard. In fact, she reveled in it. She just wanted to play a variety of parts, the more interesting the better.

In 1956, she joined the cast (led by Marilyn Monroe) of Bus Stop as Grace, the owner-operator of the title facility and diner. Sporting brassy red hair and a sassy attitude, it was characteristic of the type of part she could play in her sleep (though she approached every role wide awake.) Her fourteen year marriage to playwright Elmer Rice ended in 1956, but the following year she would wed attorney Edwin Lukas.

Having costarred in King's Row in 1942, a film many thought would never make it to the screen because of its sordid content, it's interesting that she also had a role in 1957's Peyton Place. This was another adaptation of a white-hot novel that few people believed could be acceptably translated to the screen in the conservative 1950s, when the Production Code was still in place. The New England-set drama was right in this native Massachusetts-born gal's comfort zone.

She played Nellie, the dirt poor, hardscrabble maid to Miss Lana Turner and the wife of sleazy, hard-drinking, lascivious Arthur Kennedy, who has an eye on Field's daughter Hope Lange. Field's character is no bleak and nondescript that she, literally, almost blends into the scenery. Note the pattern on her dress and how closely it matched the kitchen wallpaper in Turner's home! Kudos to costumer Adele Palmer for (not so?) subtly turning this tragic figure into a wallflower. Do note the extreme difference in the styling of Turner, flawless in makeup, hair and clothing, versus the downbeat, despondent Field.

Plenty of stage work and TV appearances on The Loretta Young Show, The Alcoa Hour, Kraft Theatre and Climax!, among others, kept her quite busy at this time. (Field always felt that the only reason to rest was in order to recharge oneself for the next assignment.) In 1959, she joined former Picnic costar Arthur O'Connell in the rural Fabian vehicle Hound Dog Man, playing O'Connell's wife. Still only forty-six, she cared not that she was made up to look like a wrinkled old woman.

After appearing with Walter Matthau on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and guest-starring on The Untouchables, Field took the role that first gained my own attention, that of a wisecracking, knowing neighbor to Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8. Taylor's mother in the film, Mildred Dunnock, spent hours fretting over her daughter's behavior and Field was on hand to give Taylor a reality check when she came in the morning after a night of kicks.

Practically every line Field delivers in the film is a dig at Taylor and she's deliciously snarky. When she's not haranguing Taylor for her loose behavior, she's trying to support the fragile Dunnock, who has trouble coming to grips with her daughter's fast lifestyle. Interestingly, real-life doggie-phile Field played here a woman who finds Dunnock's little Yorkshire Terrier a bother. I find her smirky face and pragmatic comments irresistible and wish that she were in the movie more than she is!

More TV (on hit shows like Route 66 – shown above as an overly made-up floozie, Naked City and Ben Casey) preceded her role in 1962's The Birdman of Alcatraz, which starred Burt Lancaster. She played a widow who weds the life-sentenced prisoner in a whitewashed version of a factual story. Note the difference that color makes in these two stills (the actual movie was in black and white, making it much more stark and gloomy.)

In 1963, she joined the rest of of a stellar Broadway cast in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, a highly-touted and very lengthy Actors Studio-produced revival. Her costars included Jane Fonda, Ben Gazzara, Pat Hingle, Geoffrey Horne, Geraldine Page, Franchot Tone, William Prince and Richard Thomas, which makes one wish they would have filmed the production.

She continued to pop up on TV (seen above in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour) and then in 1966 worked on another film, this time for legendary director John Ford, though it would be his last completed feature film (and a very troubled on at that with the initial star Patricia Neal suffering a stroke, requiring the sudden recasting of Anne Bancroft in her role.)  The movie was called 7 Women.

Now, in her mid-fifties (!), she was called upon to play the very pregnant wife of Eddie Albert, a missionary schoolteacher, and who has the misfortune to be stuck in a remote section of China where vicious bandits are ravaging the surrounding landscape. Field, as called for by the script, is a moaning, complaining annoyance who goes into labor just as the renegades descend on the mission compound! Very unappreciated in its time, the film has slowly won a place in many peoples' hearts, no doubt thanks to the work of stalwarts like Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson and Mildred Dunnock helping to round out the title females.

She and her second husband divorced in 1967 and the year after, she married artist Raymond Olivere, who she would remain with the rest of her life.

Also in 1968, Field played a landlady in the colorful romp How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, which starred Dean Martin and a positively luscious Stella Stevens, then at the pinnacle of her beauty (though that isn't particularly evident in this still photo.)

That same year, she showed up as raging criminal Don Stroud's blowsy, no-nonsense mother in the Clint Eastwood film Coogan's Bluff. (This story of a western sheriff transplanted to the big city formed the basis for the long-running Dennis Weaver series McCloud.) The three-minute scene was cited by many viewers as a highlight of the film.

Afterwards, she was back to Broadway once more to costar with Jessica Tandy, Colleen Dewhurst and others in All Over (which was a strangely prophetic tile for what would be her final appearance on The Great White Way after about two dozen shows there.) She then prepared to appear in the flashy, fiery role of a female evangelist of the Aimee Semple McPherson mold in Day of the Locust. Sadly, that would never come to pass because in September of 1973, Field suffered a fatal stroke. Geraldine Page, certainly no acting slouch, inherited the part as a result.

When Betty Field died in 1973 at only age sixty, we were robbed of the chance to see a truly fine and devoted character actress ply her craft into the old age she had already delved into somewhat through makeup. Countless great little old lady roles would have been enhanced by her particular brand of sass and spunk. Thankfully, her work has been captured on film in plenty of prior projects so that she can be enjoyed by fans, some of whom weren't even born when she passed away.