Born: August 2, 1914
Died: April 7, 2001 (at age 86)
Birthplace: Old Westbury, New York
Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 - April 7, 2001) was an American theatre, film and television actress and a member of the prominent Whitney family. She was an Academy Award and Tony Award winner.
Straight made her Broadway debut in 1939 in The Possessed. Her other Broadway roles included Viola in Twelfth Night (1941), Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1947) and Lady Macduff in Macbeth (1948). For her role as Elizabeth Proctor in the 1953 production of The Crucible, she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. For the 1976 film Network, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest performance ever to win an Academy Award for acting. She also received an Emmy Award nomination for the 1978 miniseries The Dain Curse. Straight also appeared as Mother Christophe in The Nun's Story (1959) and Dr. Lesh in Poltergeist (1982).
Beatrice Whitney Straight was born in Old Westbury, New York, the daughter of Dorothy Payne Whitney, of the Whitney family, and Willard Dickerman Straight, an investment banker, diplomat, and career U.S. Army officer. Her maternal grandfather was political leader and financier William Collins Whitney. In 1918, when Straight was four years old, her father died in France of influenza during the great epidemic while serving with the US Army during World War I. Following her mother's remarriage to British agronomist Leonard K. Elmhirst in 1925, the family moved to Devon England. It was there that Straight was educated at Dartington Hall and began acting in amateur theater productions.
Straight returned to the United States and made her Broadway debut in 1939 in the play The Possessed. Most of her theater work was in the classics, including Twelfth Night (1941), Macbeth, and The Crucible (1953), for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
From its inception, Straight was a member of the Actors Studio, attending the class conducted three times weekly by founding member Robert Lewis; her classmates included Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Jerome Robbins, Sidney Lumet, and about 20 others.
Straight was active in the early days of television, appearing in anthology series such as Armstrong Circle Theatre, Hallmark Hall of Fame, Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One, Suspense, The United States Steel Hour, Playhouse 90, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and dramatic series like Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, The Defenders, Route 66, Mission: Impossible, and St. Elsewhere. Further television performances include the role of Hippolyta in the Wonder Woman series, and Marion Hillyard, the icy, controlling mother of Stephen Collins in The Promise.
Straight worked infrequently in film and is perhaps remembered best for her role as a devastated wife confronting husband William Holden's infidelity in Network (1976). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance which, at five minutes and forty seconds, remains the shortest ever to win an Oscar. Her most widely seen film appearance after Network was the role of the paranormal investigator Dr. Martha Lesh in the 1982 horror film Poltergeist.
On February 22, 1942, Straight married Louis Dolivet, Free French Leader, in Polk County, Iowa. At the time, Dolivet was a speaker at the National Farm Institute and Straight was in the middle of the mid-west road show of Twelfth Night. Her mother, Dorothy Elmhirst and stepfather, Leonard K. Elmhirst attended the wedding, along with her brother Michael Straight and his wife, Belinda Crompton. Dolivet was in the French Air Force until June 1940 and was the co-editor of The Free World, a magazine published by the International Free World Association, of which he was secretary general. At the time of the wedding, her elder brother, Whitney Straight, had been missing since August of 1941, when his plane was shot down on the French coast.
Straight obtained a divorce from Dolivet in Reno, Nevada on May 24, 1949. Together they had one child:
In 1948, while starring in the Broadway production of The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square, she met Peter Cookson, who she was acting opposite. They married in 1949 and remained married until Cookson's death in 1990. Peter had two children from his previous marriage, Peter Cookson, Jr. and Jane Copland (née Cookson). Together, Straight and Cookson had two children:
In 1952, her 7 year old son, Willard, from her first marriage, accidentally drowned in a pond on their farm in Armonk while playing in a small row boat tied to the dock. The boy was found by Straight's second husband, Cookson. The boys father, Dolivet, who was living in Paris at the time, was refused a visa and therefore, unable to fly to the United States to attend the funeral, because of his allegedly pro-communist activities, which he denied.
Straight reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her last years. In 2001, she died from pneumonia in Northridge, Los Angeles at the age of eighty-six. Her interment was at William Henry Lee Memorial Cemetery in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.
Title | Year | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Phone Call from a Stranger | 1952 | Claire Fortness | |
Silken Affair, TheThe Silken Affair | 1956 | Theora | |
Patterns | 1956 | Nancy Staples | |
Nun's Story, TheThe Nun's Story | 1959 | Mother Christophe (Sanatorium) | |
Young Lovers, TheThe Young Lovers | 1959 | Mrs. Burns | |
Garden Party, TheThe Garden Party | 1973 | ||
Network | 1976 | Louise Schumacher | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress |
Bloodline | 1979 | Kate Erling | |
Promise, TheThe Promise | 1979 | Marion Hillyard | |
Formula, TheThe Formula | 1980 | Kay Neeley | |
Endless Love | 1981 | Rose Axelrod | |
Poltergeist | 1982 | Dr. Lesh | |
Two of a Kind | 1983 | Ruth | |
Chiller | 1985 | Marion Creighton | |
Robert Kennedy & His Times | 1985 | Rose Kennedy | |
Power | 1986 | Claire Hastings | |
Deceived | 1991 | Jack's Mother |
Title | Date of Production | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
The Possessed | Oct. 24, 1939 - Nov. 4, 1939 | Lisa | |
Twelfth Night | Dec. 2, 1941 - Dec. 13, 1941 | Viola | |
Land of Fame | Sep. 21, 1943 - Sep. 25, 1943 | Angela | |
The Wanhope Building | Feb. 9, 1947 - Feb. 16, 1947 | Felina | |
The Heiress | Sep. 29, 1947 - Sep. 18, 1948 | Catherine Sloper | Replacement |
Eastward in Eden | Nov. 18, 1947 - Nov. 29, 1947 | Emily Dickinson | |
Macbeth | Mar. 31, 1948 - Apr. 24, 1948 | Lady Macduff | |
The Innocents | Feb. 1, 1950 - Jun. 3, 1950 | Miss Giddens | |
The Grand Tour | Dec. 10, 1951 - Dec. 15, 1951 | Nell Valentine | |
The Crucible | Jan. 22, 1953 - Jul. 11, 1953 | Elizabeth Proctor | 1953 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play |
Everything in the Garden | Nov. 29, 1967 - Feb. 10, 1968 | Mrs. Toothe |
Title | Type | Year | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Somerset Maugham TV Theatre | Series | 1951 | ||
Lights Out | Series | 1951 | Charlotte | |
Love of Life | Series | 1951 | Vinnie Phillips | |
Cosmopolitan Theatre | Series | 1951 | ||
Love Story | Movie | 1952 | Elizabeth Barrett | |
The Web | Series | 1952 | ||
The Magnificent Failure | Movie | 1952 | Louisa May Alcott | |
Armstrong Circle Theatre | Series | 1952 | ||
Kraft Theatre | Series | 1952-1953 | ||
Love Story | Series | 1954 | ||
Suspense | Series | 1952-1954 | Mrs. de Spain / Claire Trent | |
Inner Sanctum | Series | 1954 | Louise | |
Omnibus | Series | 1953-1954 | Goneril | |
You Are There | Series | 1954-1955 | Anne Boleyn | |
Danger | Series | 1955 | ||
Studio One in Hollywood | Series | 1951-1957 | Pamela Baxter | |
The United States Steel Hour | Series | 1955-1958 | Katherine Grant / Daisy Jackson | |
Playhouse 90 | Series | 1958 | Grace | |
Play of the Week | Series | 1959 | Mlle. de St. Euverte | |
Alfred Hitchcock Presents | Series | 1959-1960 | Ida Blythe / Cynthia Fortnam | Season 5, Episode 10 and Season 5, Episode 27 |
Diagnosis: Unknown | Series | 1960 | Rhoda Clarence | |
Dr. Kildare | Series | 1961 | Pamela Rainey | |
Naked City | Series | 1962 | Ann Johns | |
The Doctors and the Nurses | Series | 1962 | Ruth Martin | |
The Eleventh Hour | Series | 1963 | Veronica Filmore | |
Ben Casey | Series | 1963 | Edith Bauer | |
Route 66 | Series | 1961-1963 | Elena De Amundo / Mother Teresa / Kitty Chamberlain | |
The Defenders | Series | 1965 | Mrs. Campbell | |
Mission: Impossible | Series | 1966 | Dr. Martha Richards Zubrovnik | Season 1, Episode 11 |
Felony Squad | Series | 1967 | Victoria Cahill | |
Matt Lincoln | Series | 1970 | ||
The Borrowers | Movie | 1973 | Mrs. Crampfurl | |
Beacon Hill | Series | 1975 | Mrs. Hacker | |
The Andros Targets | Series | 1977 | Mrs. Benderson | |
The World of Darkness | Movie | 1977 | Joanna Sanford | |
Wonder Woman | Series | 1977 | Hippolyta | |
Killer on Board | Movie | 1977 | Beatrice Richmond | |
The Dain Curse | Mini-Series | 1978 | Alice Dain Leggett | Emmy Award for Guest Actress in a Comedy (nomination) |
King's Crossing | Series | 1982 | Louisa Beauchamp | |
Faerie Tale Theatre | Series | 1984 | Queen Veronica / Woman in Museum | |
Robert Kennedy and His Times | Mini-Series | 1985 | Rose Kennedy | |
Chiller | Movie | 1985 | Marion Creighton | |
Under Siege | Movie | 1986 | Margaret Sloan | |
Jack and Mike | Series | 1988 | Mike's mother | |
St. Elsewhere | Series | 1988 | Marjorie Andrews | |
Run Til You Fall | Movie | 1988 | Margaret | |
People Like Us (TV movie) | Movie | 1990 | Maisie Verdurin |