Beatrice Straight
Encyclopedia
Beatrice Whitney Straight (August 2, 1914 – April 7, 2001) was an American theatre
, film, and television actress. Hers remains the shortest acting performance in a film to win an Oscar. In her winning role in the 1976 film Network
, she was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest time ever for the winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
. She also received an Emmy nomination for her role in The Dain Curse. Straight can also be recognized as Dr. Lesh in Poltergeist.
, Straight was the daughter of investment banker Willard Dickerman Straight and Dorothy Payne Whitney
. She was four years old when 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 England
. It was there that Straight was educated and began acting in amateur theater productions.
Returning to the United States, she made her Broadway
debut in 1939 in the play The Possessed. Most of her theatre 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.
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
, 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
.
Straight worked infrequently in film, and is 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.
Further film and television performances include the role of the mother of Lynda Carter
's title character in the Wonder Woman
series, and Marion Hillyard, the icy, controlling mother of Stephen Collins
in The Promise
. She also played the role of the paranormal
investigator Dr. Martha Lesh in the film Poltergeist (1982), the most widely seen role of her film career.
Louis Dolivet, a left-wing activist who became editor of United Nations World magazine and later a film producer
. They divorced in 1949, and she immediately married film and Broadway actor/producer Peter Cookson
, with whom she had two sons.
in her last years. She died from pneumonia
in Los Angeles
, aged 86, and was cremated.
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, film, and television actress. Hers remains the shortest acting performance in a film to win an Oscar. In her winning role in the 1976 film Network
Network (film)
Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
, she was on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, the shortest time ever for the winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
. She also received an Emmy nomination for her role in The Dain Curse. Straight can also be recognized as Dr. Lesh in Poltergeist.
Biography
Born in Old Westbury, New YorkOld Westbury, New York
Old Westbury is a village in Nassau County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 4,671....
, Straight was the daughter of investment banker Willard Dickerman Straight and Dorothy Payne Whitney
Dorothy Payne Whitney
Dorothy Payne Whitney was an American-born social activist and philanthropist and a member of the prominent Whitney family.-Biography:...
. She was four years old when her father died in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
of influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
during the great epidemic
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
while serving with the US Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
Following her mother's remarriage to British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
agronomist
Agronomist
An agronomist is a scientist who specializes in agronomy, which is the science of utilizing plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber. An agronomist is an expert in agricultural and allied sciences, with the exception veterinary sciences.Agronomists deal with interactions between plants, soils, and...
Leonard K. Elmhirst
Leonard K. Elmhirst
Leonard Knight Elmhirst was a philanthropist and agronomist who worked extensively in India. He was co-founder with his wife Dorothy of the Dartington Hall project in progressive education and rural reconstruction....
in 1925, the family moved to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It was there that Straight was educated and began acting in amateur theater productions.
Returning to the United States, she made her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in 1939 in the play The Possessed. Most of her theatre work was in the classics, including Twelfth Night (1941), Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
, and The Crucible
The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1952 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
(1953), for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
Straight was active in the early days of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, appearing in anthology series such as Armstrong Circle Theatre
Armstrong Circle Theatre
Armstrong Circle Theatre is an American anthology drama television series which ran from 1950 to 1957 on NBC, and then until 1963 on CBS. It alternated weekly with The U.S. Steel Hour.-Synopsis:...
, Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...
, Kraft Television Theatre
Kraft Television Theatre
Kraft Television Theatre is an American drama/anthology television series that began May 7, 1947 on NBC, airing at 7:30pm on Wednesday evenings until December of that year. In January 1948, it moved to 9pm on Wednesdays, continuing in that timeslot until 1958. Initially produced by the J...
, Studio One
Studio One (TV series)
Studio One is a long-running American radio–television anthology series, created in 1947 by the 26-year-old Canadian director Fletcher Markle, who came to CBS from the CBC.-Radio:...
, The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour
The United States Steel Hour is an anthology series which brought hour-long dramas to television from 1953 to 1963. The television series and the radio program that preceded it were both sponsored by the United States Steel Corporation....
, Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock. The series featured dramas, thrillers, and mysteries. By the premiere of the show on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades...
and dramatic series like Dr. Kildare
Dr. Kildare
Dr. James Kildare is a fictional character, the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s, an early 1950s radio series, a 1960s television series of the same name and a comic book based on the TV show, and a short-lived 1970s television series...
, Ben Casey
Ben Casey
Ben Casey is an American medical drama series which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. The show was known for its opening titles, which consisted of a hand drawing the symbols "♂, ♀, *, †, ∞" on a chalkboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe intoned, "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." Neurosurgeon Joseph...
, The Defenders, Route 66
Route 66 (TV series)
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill for much of the third season, during which time Tod...
, Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force . The leader of the team was Jim Phelps, played by Peter Graves, except in...
, and St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...
.
Straight worked infrequently in film, and is remembered best for her role as a devastated wife confronting husband William Holden
William Holden
William Holden was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974...
's infidelity in Network
Network (film)
Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
(1976). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
for her performance which, at five minutes and forty seconds, remains the shortest ever to win an Oscar.
Further film and television performances include the role of the mother of Lynda Carter
Lynda Carter
Lynda Jean Carter is an American actress and singer, best known for being Miss World USA and as the star of the 1970s television series The New Original Wonder Woman and The New Adventures of Wonder Woman ....
's title character in the Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman (TV series)
Wonder Woman is an American television series based on the DC Comics comic book superhero of the same name. Starring Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince and Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor, the show originally aired from 1975 to 1979....
series, and Marion Hillyard, the icy, controlling mother of Stephen Collins
Stephen Collins
Stephen Weaver Collins is an American actor, writer, and singer. He is perhaps best known for playing the role of Eric Camden on the long running television series 7th Heaven and more recently as Dr. Dayton King on the ABC TV series No Ordinary Family.-Early life:Collins was born in Des Moines,...
in The Promise
The Promise (1979 film)
The Promise is a 1979 film, released by was a Universal Pictures, which starred Kathleen Quinlan, Stephen Collins, and Beatrice Straight. It was directed by Gilbert Cates and produced by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller...
. She also played the role of the paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
investigator Dr. Martha Lesh in the film Poltergeist (1982), the most widely seen role of her film career.
Personal life
Straight was married twice, first to FrenchmanFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Louis Dolivet, a left-wing activist who became editor of United Nations World magazine and later a film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
. They divorced in 1949, and she immediately married film and Broadway actor/producer Peter Cookson
Peter Cookson
Peter Cookson was a stage and film actor of the 1940s and 1950s. Cookson, once married to stage and film actress Beatrice Straight, acted in films G.I. Honeymoon and Fear...
, with whom she had two sons.
Death
Straight reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
in her last years. She died from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, aged 86, and was cremated.
Filmography
| Title | Year | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phone Call from a Stranger Phone Call from a Stranger Phone Call from a Stranger is a 1952 American drama film directed by Jean Negulesco, who was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and I.A.R... |
1952 | Claire Fortness | |
| 1956 | Theora | ||
| Patterns | 1956 | Nancy Staples | |
| 1959 | Mother Christophe (Sanatorium) | ||
| 1959 | Mrs. Burns | ||
| 1973 | |||
| Network Network (film) Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet... |
1976 | Louise Schumacher | Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the... |
| Bloodline | 1979 | Kate Erling | |
| 1979 | Marion Hillyard | ||
| 1980 | Kay Neeley | ||
| Endless Love Endless Love (film) Endless Love is a 1981 romantic drama film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. The screenplay by Judith Rascoe was adapted from the novel by Scott Spencer... |
1981 | Rose Axelrod | |
| Poltergeist | 1982 | Dr. Lesh | |
| Two of a Kind Two of a Kind (1983 film) Two of a Kind is a 1983 American romantic comedy film directed by John Herzfeld and starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The original music score was composed by Patrick Williams. The film has Travolta as an inventor and Newton-John as a bank teller. It is up to both criminally-minded... |
1983 | Ruth | |
| Chiller Wes Craven's Chiller Chiller, or as it is sometimes known Wes Craven's Chiller, is a made for TV horror/thriller released in 1985. It was directed by Wes Craven, and written by J.D. Feigelson.- Synopsis :... |
1985 | Marion Creighton | |
| Robert Kennedy & His Times Robert Kennedy & His Times Robert Kennedy & His Times is a 1985 American television miniseries directed by Marvin J. Chomsky. The miniseries was released in three parts and depicts the life of Robert F. Kennedy.-Cast:- Crew :-Awards and nominations:... |
1985 | Rose Kennedy | |
| Power | 1986 | Claire Hastings | |
| Deceived Deceived Deceived is a 1991 American thriller film starring Goldie Hawn and John Heard.-Plot:Adrienne Sauders is happily married to her art dealer husband, Jack . They have one child together. Adrienne hears from a friend that she thought she saw Jack in town when he claimed to be on an out of town... |
1991 | Adrienne's Mother | |