Broadway star Julie Harris, who won an unprecedented five Tony Awards for best actress, has died. She was 87.
Actress and family friend Francesca James says Harris died Saturday at her home in West Chatham, Mass. She had previously suffered two strokes.
Harris’ first Tony Award was for the free-spirited Sally Bowles in John van Druten’s I am a Camera in 1952, her second in 1956 as St. Joan in Lillian Hellman’s adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s The Lark, a third in 1969 for Forty Carats, followed four years later as Mary Todd Lincoln in The Last Mrs. Lincoln by James Prideaux. In 1977, she won her unprecedented fifth Tony as Emily Dickinson in William Luce’s play The Belle of Amherst (directed by Charles Nelson Reilly).
Miss Harris also carries the laurel of receiving more Tony Award nominations than any other actor. She received four additional nominations for her work in The Au Pair Man (with Charles Durning), Marathon ’33, Skyscraper (starring opposite Charles Nelson Reilly), and Lucifer’s Child.
Television viewers knew her as the free-spirited Lilimae Clements in the 1980s series “Knots Landing.”
Harris leaped to fame at age 24 playing a lonely 12-year-old tomboy in “The Member of the Wedding.” She repeated the Broadway role in the 1952 film version. She was also James Dean’s romantic co-star in “East of Eden.”
(source)