BARBARA HARRIS

(25 July 1935 - 21 August 2018)

The American actress Barbara Harris, who has died aged 83 from lung cancer, always made a good impression whatever she appeared in. Much of her career was spent in the theatre but she was in some films and on television, too. She began acting as a teenager in Chicago, along with Mike Nichols, Elaine May and Edward Asner. Later, her husband Paul Sills, to whom she was married from 1955 to 1958, founded the Compass Players which later spawned the Second City theatre company, moving from Chicago to New York. She won a Tony award for the musical The Apple Tree in 1967. Her first TV appearance was in Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1961, followed by Naked City, Channing, The Defenders, etc. Her first film was Fred Coe’s A Thousand Clowns in 1965, then Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You In the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad and Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?, possibly two of the longest film titles ever. Shorter ones included Arthur Hiller’s Plaza Suite, Robert Altman’s Nashville, Hitchcock’s Family Plot and Disney’s Freaky Friday, with Jodie Foster. The films got fewer in the 1970s with just Movie Movie, Hill’s Angels and The Seduction of Joe Tynan. In the 1980s Barbara Harris was in Second-Hand Hearts, Peggy Sue Got Married, Nice Girls Don’t Explode and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Her last film was Grosse Pointe Blank in 1997. The rest of her time was taken up in teaching acting classes in Scottsdale, Arizona.

MICHAEL DARVELL