Barbara Baxley

Barbara Baxley was born on January 1, 1923 in Porterville California to Bert and Emma Baxley. She had an older sister. She attended University of the Pacific in Stockton.{{Cite web |title=Barbara Baxley biography. American stage, film and television actress |url=https://biographs.org/barbara-baxley |access-date=2025-05-15 |website=biographs.org}}

Barbara Baxley acted for six years in productions of schools and Little Theaters before she had her first professional role.{{cite news |last1=Bodin |first1=Walter |title=Tallulah, Cast Acclaimed in Suave 'Private Lives' |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22754266/oakland_tribune/ |work=Oakland Tribune |date=June 1, 1948 |location=California, Oakland |page=28|via = Newspapers.com|accessdate = August 12, 2018}} {{Open access}}

A life member of the Actors Studio,{{cite book|author=David Garfield|title=A Player's Place: The Story of the Actors Studio|url=https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf|url-access=registration|year=1980|publisher=MacMillan Publishing Co. Inc.|location=New York|isbn=0-02-542650-8|page=[https://archive.org/details/playersplacestor00garf/page/277 277]|chapter=Appendix: Life Members of the Actors Studio as of January 1980}} Baxley also studied acting under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/09/obituaries/barbara-baxley-63-who-acted-in-theater-movie-and-tv-roles.html |title= Barbara Baxley, 67, Who Acted In Theater, Movie and TV Roles |work= The New York Times |date=June 9, 1990}} Her first film was East of Eden, where she portrayed Adam Trask's obnoxious nurse at the end of the film.

Baxley had the challenging lead role in the 1960 film The Savage Eye, portraying a divorcee exploring Los Angeles, speaking in voice-over narration and dialog without delivering any directly spoken lines on screen. A. H. Weiler commented in a New York Times review that Baxley's acting possessed "restraint and sensitivity to register both the poignance and tragedy of her situation."{{cite news |last=Weiler |first=A. H. |date=June 7, 1960 |url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9805E6DC1F38E333A25754C0A9609C946191D6CF |title=The Savage Eye (1959) |work=The New York Times }}

In 1961, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress (Dramatic) for her performance in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's comedy Period of Adjustment. She appeared in Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Neil Simon's Plaza Suite as well as the 1960s Broadway musical She Loves Me, which co-starred Jack Cassidy, Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey. She also starred in the 1976 Broadway play Best Friend.

Baxley appeared in supporting roles in many television series of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. She played a wife who had her rodeo performer husband, played by Lee Van Cleef, murdered in the crime drama series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, starring David Janssen. She appeared in a 1958 Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Gilded Lily", as Enid Griffin and she played the role of Cora Wheeler in the original Twilight Zone episode of "Mute".

Baxley played two different characters in two episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel, starring Richard Boone. She played the widow Lucy "Rose" Morrow in S1 E28 "Killer's Widow" which aired 3/21/1958. She also played roles on Where the Heart Is and Another World, two daytime soap operas. She further played on an episode of The Fugitive as the one-armed man's girlfriend. She appeared in six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Another Baxley performance came in a 1973 episode of Hawaii Five-O entitled "One Big Happy Family". She portrayed the matriarch of a serial-killing family.

She is perhaps better known for the role of Lady Pearl, the feisty companion of country music icon Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) in Robert Altman's film Nashville (1975) and as the mother of Sally Field's character in Norma Rae (1979).

Baxley was a close friend of musician Dave Brubeck and his wife; according to him, Baxley was more like a member of the family.Ted Pankins, An Interview with Dave Brubeck, July 23, 2007 He later confirmed that Baxley was a liberal Democrat, an atheist, a woman who always put the needs and well-being of others before her own self, and that when she died, he and his wife, Iola, not only handled her funeral arrangements but also buried her in the same cemetery next to their own plots so that they all could be together as one in death, same as in life, because their bond held such a strong connection.

Baxley died at age 67 on June 7, 1990, at her home in Manhattan, New York, of an apparent heart attack. She is buried at Umpawaug Cemetery in Redding, Connecticut.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FOHgDAAAQBAJ&q=Barbara+Baxley+Umpawaug+Cemetery&pg=PA96|title=Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.|first=Scott|last=Wilson|date=16 September 2016|publisher=McFarland|isbn=9781476625997|via=Google Books}}

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{{Portal|Biography|California|Los Angeles|New York City|Theatre|Film|Television}}

• {{IMDb name|0062642}}
• {{IBDB name|31315}}
• {{iobdb name|24721}}
• {{Find a Grave|6620993}}
• [http://archives.nypl.org/the/18640 Barbara Baxley Papers, 1911-1988], held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• [http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/06/28/william-inge-barbara-baxley New York Public Library blog about Barbara Baxley and William Inge]

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Category:1923 births

Category:1990 deaths

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:20th-century American singers

Category:Actresses from California

Category:American film actresses

Category:American musical theatre actresses

Category:American stage actresses

Category:American television actresses

Category:People from Porterville, California

Category:20th-century American women singers

Category:American atheists