Television industry This article is more than 18 years oldDallas matriarch Barbara Bel Geddes dies
This article is more than 18 years oldBarbara Bel Geddes, the actor best remembered as Miss Ellie, the long-suffering matriarch in the television series Dallas, has died of lung cancer. She was 82.
Although the lurid tale of a Texas oil dynasty brought Bel Geddes to the attention of a modern audience, she was an established stage and film actor before moving to South Fork. She was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in the 1948 film I Remember Mama, and she was nominated for a Tony for her character Maggie in the first Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
She was also known for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, in which she played the role of James Stewart's former fiancee, Midge.
Bel Geddes craved films. In 1946 she was signed to the RKO studio, appearing opposite Henry Fonda in her first film, The Long Night. But after four years she was dropped by the studio after its new owner, Howard Hughes, said "she wasn't sexy enough".
She made a handful of films, including Panic in the Streets, before her career was interrupted after she gave evidence to the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities committee. She withdrew to the stage and next worked in the 1958 film Vertigo.
The San Francisco Chronicle said yesterday that Bel Geddes, a longtime smoker, died on Monday at her home in Maine.
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