MAUREEN STAPLETON,  The American Anna Magnani
(June 21, 1925 - March 13, 2006)

Born in Troy, New York, she came to New York City in 1943 to fulfill her childhood aspiration to become an actress.  To support herself and her studies, she modeled for artists Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh and worked the night shift as a billing machine operator at the Hotel New Yorker.

She initially studied Delsarte acting technique with Frances Robinson-Duff but after a few months began taking classes with Herbert Berghof.

Her Broadway debut happened in October 1946 when she convinced producer-director Guthrie McClintic to audition her for The Playboy of the Western World in the small role of Sara Tansey.  She also understudied the leading role of Pegeen and was given the opportunity to  perform during the last week of the run.  It was the beginning of an important apprenticeship with the McClintic-Katharine Cornell company.  

As a charter member of the Actors Studio she studied with both Robert Lewis and Lee Strasberg.  While studying at the studio she continued her work on the stage as Miss Hatch in Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story and  as Emilie in Arthur Laurents's The Bird Cage.
According to Robert Lewis, she was an actress who operated on an instinctive level. "Maureen is a kind of true believer. She just believes in everything. It's part of her nature. It's the way she is, and that is her particular talent."

Her first major success was her portrayal of the earthy Italian widow Serafina della Rosa in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo,(1951)  produced by
Cheryl Crawford and co-starred Eli Wallach as Alvaro.
In addition to winning the Tony Award for best actress she was hailed as the
"American Anna Magnani". One of the New York critics described her Serafina as "lusty, brawling, brooding, hysterical, and encompassing, a performance of stunning and tremendous size. She is mistress of the role in every nuance of it and it is a joy to watch her acting."

She went on to create Flora in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Lady Torrance in Orpheus Descending. She played Amanda Wingfield in the revival of The Glass Menagerie at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 1965 and the 1975 revival at the Circle in the Square.

In Lillian Hellman's play Toys in the Attic she created the role of Carrie Berniers in 1960. As the years progressed she began to play more comedy as the amateur matchmaker Aunt Ida in S. N. Behrman's The Cold Wind and the Warm, again co-starring with Eli Wallach under the direction of
Harold Clurman.  But it was in two Neil Simon plays that she received special notice. Under the direction of Mike Nichols, she played three different roles in Plaza Suite: Karen Nash, Muriel Tate, and Norma Hubley.  Martin Gottfried in the Women's Wear Daily claimed that Stapleton proved "for the first time that an Actors Studio-trained actor can play comedy."
            As Evy Meara in The Gingerbread Lady she was awarded the Tony and the Drama Desk Award and was a winner in Variety's New York Drama Critics Poll.  The comedy premiered at the Plymouth Theatre on December 13, 1970 and New York Times  critic Clive Barnes wrote: "Maureen Stapleton, as the battered, baffled lush thrush has probably the part of career, and she is quite
wonderful."

Her experience in film began in 1958 in Lonelyhearts starring Monty Clift and has included the film versions of Orpheus Descending, titled The Fugitive Kind, A View From the Bridge, Airport, Plaza Suite.  She received the Golden Globe Award for Airport in 1971 and in 1981 she received the National Society of Film Critics Award as well as the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal of Emma Goldman in Reds.

In accepting the Oscar she said, "I would like to thank everyone I've ever met in my entire life."

Her first love was always the stage. In an interview in The New Yorker (October 28, 1961) she expressed her belief that "the aspiration to act is so great, so deep, so complete, that you give yourself not ten years, not twenty, but your whole lifetime to realize it."