Barbara Bel Geddes, 82, Actress Famed for Broadway and ‘Dallas’
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Barbara Bel Geddes, the winsome New York-born actress who rose to stage and movie stardom but reached her greatest fame as Miss Ellie Ewing in the long-running TV series “Dallas,” died Monday of lung cancer. She was 82, and died at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine.
Bel Geddes was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1948 drama “I Remember Mama” and was the original Maggie the Cat on Broadway in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
But she was best known as the matriarch of the rambunctious Ewing oil family on the top-rated “Dallas.” Bel Geddes won an Emmy in 1980 as best lead actress in a drama series,
In March 1984, Bel Geddes was stricken with a major heart attack. Miss Ellie was played by Donna Reed for six months, then Bel Geddes returned to “Dallas,” remaining until 1990, a year before CBS canceled the show.
In 1945, Bel Geddes made a splash on Broadway at 23 with her first important role in “Deep Are the Roots,” winning the New York Drama Critics Award as best actress.
She announced to a reporter: “My ambition is to be a good screen actress. I think it would be much more exciting to work for Frank Capra, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, or Elia Kazan than to stay on Broadway.”
Hollywood was quick to notice. In 1946 she signed a contract with RKO that granted her unusual request to be committed to only one picture a year. After a disappointing start, her second film was a hit playing a budding writer in “I Remember Mama.” After four movies, Howard Hughes, who had bought control of RKO in 1948, dropped her contract because “she wasn’t sexy enough.”
Devastated, Bel Geddes returned to the stage in 1955, as Maggie the Cat in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Her biggest Broadway success was “Mary, Mary,” a frothy marital comedy by Jean Kerr, which opened in 1961 and ran for more than 1,500 performances.
In her film career, Bel Geddes was able to work with great filmmakers such as Kazan (“Panic in the Streets”) and Alfred Hitchcock (“Vertigo”). She also co-starred with Danny Kaye in “The Five Pennies” and with Jeanne Moreau in “Five Branded Women.”
