I’m not that old (I have a birthday coming up, so I’m telling myself that rather loudly) but I have already fallen into the habit of opening up the obituary pages expecting to see people I know. Today, it happened, and I reacted by shouting “Oh, no!” in the middle of the Chicago Public Radio offices.

In 1991, I was living in Los Angeles, working at a theater as a literary manager, but what I really wanted to do, ya see, was direct. I was approached by a young actor named Scott who had made some money as a fitness trainer, and, with the backing of some wealthy clients, wanted to mount a production of a play with himself as a star. (This kind of showcase for one’s own talents was quite common in LA… it’s one of the reasons theater in that town is so uneven: everything’s an audition for something else.) The play he chose was “Dancing in the End Zone,” by Bill C. Davis. The play was about a gifted college athlete (that would be Scott) torn between a lovely young tutor and his overprotective, manipulative mother.

This was problematic: one of the truisms of what we called “Waiver theater” in LA was that it was hard to cast older roles. Older actors had either made it to the point where they didn’t need to work for free, in some dingy rented hall, or they had spent too many years working for free in dingy halls and were sick of it. So we were surprised, and a little intimidated, when Lois Nettleton agreed to do the part. (We at least were smart enough not to make her audition.) She was one of those actors called (in the male version) “That guy….” you knew him (or, here, her) from a thousand TV parts, but she had never actually crossed over to that, actually rarified, household name strata. But she was a serious actress, revered in the theater world, and we were worried… Would she throw endless diva fits? Would she just look around at us, and say — truthfully — “Lord knows, I deserve better than this!” and simply quit?

As it turns out, the diva in the cast was the young woman playing the tutor — I mercifully forget her name, but she was one of those actors who was so terrified of screwing up that she never allowed us, in rehearsal, to actually try. Instead, an endless series of arguments, complaints, unanswerable questions, all to avoid, you know, acting the play. But while we devoted huge amounts of energy to solving her endless problems, there was Lois, doing her work, graciously, kindly, quietly. well. She took direction from me as if I was Peter Brook. She worked with Scott, a rookie (who, soon after the production, took up another line of work, for good reason) as if he were Olivier. She was a professional who decided to treat the rest of us as if we were, too, and it became contagious.

And she was damned good in the play, too… one of the few pleasures of that somewhat benighted production was seeing her get wonderful reviews, and even an award from a local theater magazine. Soon after — I won’t claim cause and effect — she was cast as the lead in a big budget local revival of “A Little Night Music,” and she just glowed in it. I felt strange paternal pride for a woman twice my age.

In tribute to Lois, go see a play, where ever you are. Pick one, if you can, with an older actor. And be aware of the fact that this older actor could be doing, maybe should be doing, a lot of other things with his or her time, but what propels them is not a late-blooming, or long persistent, desire for fame or riches — this is the theater — but a kind of crazy love and devotion to what they’re doing.

Here’s the New York Times obit: I knew that she had been married to Jean Shepherd, but stupidly, never asked about him. Ah, well. I also found out that she grew up in Oak Park, IL, where I live now. Strange.

January 22, 2008

Lois Nettleton, 80, Dies; Acted on Stage and TV

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Lois Nettleton, an actress whose dramatic and comic dexterity in theater, film and television earned her wide public recognition and deep professional respect for more than a half century, died on Friday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 80.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, her friend Dale Olson said.

Ms. Nettleton, who had a soft, almost breathy speaking voice, made an indelible impression in 1973 when she took over the role of Blanche DuBois in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire.” Critics applauded the courage her character displayed in the face of corruption and broken, magnolia-scented dreams. In a review for The Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, Rex Reed called her performance, starkly different from previous ones, “shatteringly brilliant.”

Her extensive work in television included the role of Norma in “The Midnight Sun,” a 1961 episode of “The Twilight Zone” about an ever-hotter Earth, which is considered a classic by students of the series. Her many other television roles included appearances on early dramatic shows like “Studio One” and “Armstrong Circle Theater” and more recent ones on popular shows like “Seinfeld” and “Cagney & Lacey.” She also appeared for three years on the daytime drama “General Hospital.”

Her movies began with a bit part on Elia Kazan’s “Face in the Crowd,” and she was one of the last contract players at MGM. In an interview with Back Stage in 2004, Ms. Nettleton said she was first cast as “the plain nice girl or the unhappy wife next door.” Her vehicles later became quite varied, ranging from the film adaptation of Williams’s “Period of Adjustment” to “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

Ms. Nettleton told Back Stage that “the joy in acting is playing as many different characters as possible.” She said she turned down many roles that did not interest her and favored “mature roles.”

Lois Nettleton was born in August 1927, in Oak Park, Ill. Her family was poor and her parents divorced when she was young. In an interview with After Dark in 1972, she said she used fantasy to escape her circumstances, developing an ambition to act in the process. She put on little shows in her backyard.

In 1948, she was Miss Chicago and a semifinalist in the Miss America pageant.

After graduating from high school, Ms. Nettleton studied at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, then moved to New York to join the Actors Studio, where she learned the Method approach to acting.

Ms. Nettleton made her Broadway debut in 1949 in “The Biggest Thief in Town,” with Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times calling her work “pleasantly fresh and disarming.”

In 1955, Ms. Nettleton was understudy to Barbara Bel Geddes in Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and occasionally got to play the role of Maggie. In 1959, she won a Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting performance by a nonfeatured actress for her portrayal of Shelagh O’Connor in “God and Kate Murphy.”

In 1976, Ms. Nettleton was nominated for a Tony Award for a Broadway revival of Sidney Howard’s “They Knew What They Wanted.”

She told Back Stage that she would have liked to have spent more time in New York concentrating on theater, but that she had to take care of her ailing mother in Los Angeles. There, she became best known for her television work, including being a regular on “In the Heat of the Night” and appearing in popular series like “Murder, She Wrote,” and “The Golden Girls.” She was nominated for several Emmies.

Ms. Nettleton was divorced from Jean Shepherd, the radio host and author; they met when she called his show. She left no immediate survivors.

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