Barbara Baxley

Barbara Angie Rose Baxley (January 1, 1923 – June 7, 1990) was an American actress and singer.

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.

Barbara Baxley acted for six years in productions of schools and Little Theaters before she had her first professional role.

A life member of the Actors Studio, Baxley also studied acting under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York City. 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 wrote in a New York Times review that Baxley's acting possessed "restraint and sensitivity to register both the poignance and tragedy of her situation."

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. 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. In the series Richard Diamond, Private Detective, she played a wife who had her rodeo performer husband murdered. She appeared in a 1958 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Gilded Lily", 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, the widow Lucy "Rose" Morrow in the episode "Killer's Widow" (1958), and Lily Leighton in the episode "Full Circle" (1960). She also played roles on Where the Heart Is and Another World, two daytime series. She appeared in an episode of The Fugitive as the one-armed man's girlfriend and in six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Another Baxley performance came in a 1973 episode of Hawaii Five-O, titled "One Big Happy Family", where she portrayed the matriarch of a serial-killing family. In season 8 (episode "A Sentence to Steal"), she appeared as Elizabeth Rollins.

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. 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 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.