Celebrity Deathwatch: Kim Stanley, Actress, 76

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

http://www.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/News/08/22/obit.stanley.ap/index.html

Acclaimed theater actress Kim Stanley dead
August 22, 2001 Posted: 10:33 AM EDT (1433 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Kim Stanley, acclaimed as one of the theater's finest
actresses in plays like "Bus Stop," "A Touch of the Poet" and "Picnic," was
a reluctant star, an elusive performer who dazzled audiences and critics
with her individuality.

The 76-year-old Stanley, who died Monday of cancer in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
came of age on Broadway in the 1950s. She was part of a new generation of
actresses such as Julie Harris, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and
Barbara Bel Geddes who illuminated the plays of William Inge, Tennessee
Williams and Horton Foote.

"Kim Stanley was a great, great actress, and her work was always an
inspiration to me," the 85-year-old Foote said Tuesday from Minneapolis. "We
worked together a number of times and I will always be grateful for that and
for her friendship."

Stanley never became as famous as her contemporaries, possibly because she
made few movies or television appearances and many of her theater
performances were in plays that had brief runs. And her best-known stage
role, Cherie, the goodhearted chanteuse in Inge's 1955 comedy, "Bus Stop,"
went to Marilyn Monroe in the movies.

"It was one of those rare perfect experiences in the theater for me.
Cherie's a delightful part -- it's hard not to love that girl," Stanley told
The New York Times some years later.

Her other roles on Broadway were varied -- ranging from the tomboy sister in
Inge's "Picnic" (1953) to a young bride deserted by her husband in Foote's
short-lived "The Traveling Lady" (1954) to the celebrated Actors Studio
Theater revival of Chekhov's "The Tmbitious Hollywood actress.

Stanley received a best-actress Oscar nomination for portraying a crazed
medium in 1964's "Seance on a Wet Afternoon," and a second -- in the
supporting category -- for playing Frances Farmer's mother in "Frances"
(1982).

She won two Emmy awards -- one for a 1963 appearance in a "Ben Casey"
episode and another for her role as Big Mama in a PBS production of "Cat on
a Hot Tin Roof."

Stanley was born Patricia Beth Reid on February 11, 1925, in Tularosa, New
Mexico, and was raised in Texas. She attended the University of New Mexico
and graduated from the University of Texas with a psychology degree.

A scout with the Pasadena Playhouse in California spotted her during a
college performance, and she stayed at that theater for a year.

Stanley, who spent a season with a stock company in Louisville, Kentucky,
then traveled to New York in 1947. She became part of the fledgling
off-Broadway movement just beginning to take off in Greenwich Village and
later joined the Actors Studio and worked with its guru, Lee Strasberg.

In 1979, she returned to New York to briefly head a small company of actors
setting up shop in Soho. Stanley spent her last years in New Mexico,
teaching at the College of Santa Fe.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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