In Remembrance: Barbara Bel Geddes

     Barbara Bel Geddes, the actress nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her work in the 1948 drama I Remember Mama, has passed away in Northeast Harbor, Maine on August 8, 2005. She was 82.

     Born in New York City on October 31, 1922 to noted theatrical designer Norman Bel Geddes, Barbara Bel Geddes spent much of her time growing up backstage in many of New York City’s theaters. Following graduation from a private school, Bel Geddes began acting, first in summer-stock productions and then finally in New York, making her Broadway debut in 1941’s Out Of The Frying Pan.

     In 1945, Bel Geddes appeared in the Broadway production of Deep Are The Roots, winning a New York Drama Critics Award for best actress. The following year, she signed a contract with RKO Studios which included a rather unusual stipulation- that she only be committed to one film per year. Bel Geddes’s film debut was opposite Henry Fonda in The Long Night (1947). She followed that up with her Oscar-nominated turn in I Remember Mama (1948), an adaptation of John Van Druten’s play about an immigrant family in San Francisco. She appeared in two more films at the studio – Blood On The Moon (1948) and Caught (1949) – before Howard Hughes, who had purchased RKO in 1948, dropped her because “she wasn’t sexy enough.” Bel Geddes went over to 20^th Century Fox Studios to star in two noir films - director Elia Kazan’s classic Panic In The Streets (1950) and Fourteen Hours (1951) with Richard Basehart.

     Bel Geddes left Hollywood and headed back to New York and live theater, originating the role of Maggie The Cat for the 1955 production of Tennessee William’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. She also received rave reviews for the 1961 comedy Mary, Mary. Bel Geddes also received Tony Award nominations for the two shows.

     Bel Geddes did not forsake films entirely. In 1958 she returned to Hollywood to appear in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. For The Five Pennies (1959), she starred opposite Danny Kaye in the bio-pic of coronet player Red Nichols. After supporting roles in the war drama 5 Branded Women (1960) and John Sturges’s drama By Love Possessed, Bel Gettes once again left Hollywood. She would return a decade later for her final two film appearances- Summertree and The Todd Killings (both 1971).

     Bel Geddes retired from acting in 1966 to tend to her husband, Windsor Lewis, who was fighting cancer at the time. He died in 1972. She returned to acting in 1978 as the matriarch of the rowdy Ewing family on the primetime soap opera Dallas, a role that would win her a new generation of fans. She would earn a Best Lead Actress In A Drama Series Emmy Award in 1980 for her work on the show.