Beatrice Straight

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Beatrice Straight
Born	Beatrice Whitney Straight August 2, 1914 Old Westbury, New York, U.S.
Died	April 7, 2001 (aged 86) Northridge, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1939–1991
Spouse(s)	Louis Dolivet ​ ​ (m. 1942; div. 1949)​ Peter Cookson ​ ​ (m. 1949; died 1990)​
Children	3
Parent(s)	Willard Dickerman Straight Dorothy Payne Whitney
Relatives	Whitney W. Straight (brother) Michael W. Straight (brother)

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 as well as an Emmy Award nominee.^[1]

Straight made her Broadway debut in The Possessed (1939). 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 production of The Crucible (1953), she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. For the satirical film Network (1976), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her performance is the shortest ever to win an Academy Award for acting, at five minutes and two seconds of screen time. She also received an Emmy Award nomination for the miniseries The Dain Curse (1978). Straight also appeared as Mother Christophe in The Nun's Story (1959) and Dr. Martha Lesh in Poltergeist (1982).

Contents

• 1Early life
• 2Career
• 3Personal life
• 4Filmography
  • 4.1Film
  • 4.2Broadway
  • 4.3Television
• 5References
• 6External links

Early life[edit]

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.^[1] 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 United States 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. In the 1930s, she attended the Cornish School in Seattle where many of her teachers at Dartington Hall were from and to which both she and her mother became major benefactors.^[2]

Career[edit]

Straight returned to the United States and made her Broadway debut in the play The Possessed (1939). Most of her theater work was in the classics, including Twelfth Night (1941), Macbeth (1948) 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.^[3]

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). Despite having a brief appearance, Straight was highly praised for her performance, earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.^[4] Another widely seen film appearance was the role of the paranormal investigator Dr. Martha Lesh in the horror film Poltergeist (1982).

Personal life[edit]

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 midwest road show of Twelfth Night.^[5] Her mother Dorothy Elmhirst and stepfather Leonard K. Elmhirst attended the wedding 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 1941, when his plane was shot down on the French coast.^[5]

Straight obtained a divorce from Dolivet in Reno, Nevada on May 24, 1949. Together they had one child:^[6]

• Willard Whitney Straight Dolivet (1945–1952)^[7]

In 1948, while starring in the Broadway production of The Heiress,^[8] an adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square, she met Peter Cookson. They married in 1949 and remained married until Cookson's death in 1990. Peter had two children from his previous marriage, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Jane Coopland (née Cookson).^[1] Together, Straight and Cookson had two children:^[1]

• Gary Cookson
• Anthony "Tony" Cookson

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 Cookson.^[7] The boy's 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 alleged pro-communist activities, which he denied.^[9]

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 86.^[1] Her interment was at William Henry Lee Memorial Cemetery in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.

Filmography[edit]

Film[edit]

Title[10]	Year	Role	Notes
Phone Call from a Stranger	1952	Claire Fortness
Patterns	1956	Nancy Staples
The Silken Affair	1956	Theora
The Nun's Story	1959	Mother Christophe (Sanatorium)
The Young Lovers	1964	Mrs. Burns
The Garden Party	1973	Mrs. Sheridan
Network	1976	Louise Schumacher	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
The Promise	1979	Marion Hillyard
Bloodline	1979	Kate Erling
The Formula	1980	Kay Neeley
Endless Love	1981	Rose Axelrod
Poltergeist	1982	Dr. Lesh
Two of a Kind	1983	Ruth
Power	1986	Claire Hastings	nominated - Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress
Deceived	1991	Adrienne's Mother	final film role

Broadway[edit]

Title[11]	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

Television[edit]

Title[10]	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	Miniseries	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	Movie	1990	Maisie Verdurin

References[edit]

1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Mel Gussow (April 11, 2001). "Beatrice Straight, Versatile Star, Dies at 86". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-01-21. Beatrice Straight, a graceful and versatile actress who won both an Oscar and a Tony Award, died on Saturday in North Ridge, Calif. She was 86 and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., for most of the last 10 years. ...
2. ^ Cornish, Nellie C. Miss Aunt Nellie: the Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1964: pp 214-17.
3. ^ Robert Lewis (1996) [1984]. "Actors Studio, 1947". Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life. New York: Applause Books. p. 183. ISBN 1-55783-244-7. At the end of the summer, on Gadget's return from Hollywood, we settled the roster of actors for our two classes in what we called the Actors Studio - using the word 'studio' as we had when we named our workshop in the Group, the Group Theatre Studio... My group, meeting three times a week, consisted of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Jerome Robbins, Herbert Berghof, Tom Ewell, John Forsythe, Anne Jackson, Sidney Lumet, Kevin McCarthy, Karl Malden, E.G. Marshall, Patricia Neal, Beatrice Straight, David Wayne, and - well, I don't want to drop names, so I'll stop there. In all, there were about fifty.
4. ^ "Beatrice Straight performance length". Serving Cinema. Archived from the original on 2017-08-06. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b Staff (February 22, 1942). "BEATRICE W. STRAIGHT IS WED IN DES MOINES Sister of Lost R.A.F. Flier the Bride of Louis Dolivet, Editor". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
6. ^ Staff (May 25, 1949). "MRS. DOLIVET GETS DECREE As Beatrice Straight of the Stage, She Was Married in '42". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
7. ^ Jump up to:^a b Staff (September 8, 1952). "ACTRESS' SON, 7, DROWNS Willard Dolivet Found in Pool on Westchester Farm". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
8. ^ Fluker, Kit. "Beatrice Straight papers 1922-1987 [bulk 1968-1986]". nypl.org. Archives of the New York Public Library. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
9. ^ Staff (September 12, 1952). "$110,000 IN BOYS ESTATE Mother Files Papers in Case of Dolivet Child Who Drowned". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
10. ^ Jump up to:^a b "Beatrice Straight". imdb.com. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
11. ^ "Beatrice Straight". ibdb.com. Retrieved 3 February 2016.

External links[edit]

• Biography portal

• Beatrice Straight on IMDb
• Beatrice Straight at the Internet Broadway Database 
• Beatrice Straight at the TCM Movie Database
• Beatrice Straight at AllMovie
• Beatrice Straight at Find a Grave
• Beatrice Straight papers, 1922-1987, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts