Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[CBHagman]

49. Stage, TV and film actress Julie Harris.

I am sorry to report that Julie Harris (East of Eden, The Haunting) has left us. She was 87.

[url]http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57599994/broadway-star-julie-harris-dies/[/url]

The 5-foot-4 Harris, blue-eyed with delicate features and reddish-gold hair, made her Broadway debut in 1945 in a short-lived play called "It's a Gift." Five years later, at the age of 24, Harris was cast as Frankie, a lonely 12-year-old tomboy on the brink of adolescence, in "The Member of the Wedding," Carson McCullers' stage version of her wistful novel.

The critics raved about Harris, with Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times calling her performance "extraordinary — vibrant, full of anguish and elation."

"That play was really the beginning of everything big for me," Harris had said.

The actress appeared in the 1952 film version, too, with her original Broadway co-stars, Ethel Waters and Brandon De Wilde, and received an Academy Award nomination.

Harris won her first Tony Award for playing Sally Bowles, the confirmed hedonist in "I Am a Camera," adapted by John van Druten from Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories." The play later became the stage and screen musical "Cabaret." In her second Tony-winning performance, Harris played a much more spiritual character, Joan of Arc in Lillian Hellman's adaptation of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark." The play had a six-month run, primarily because of the notices for Harris.