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Maureen Stapleton was an acting staple for nearly 60 years, a triple-threat standout on Broadway (six Tony nominations and two wins), in movies (four Oscar nominations and one win) and on TV (seven Emmy nominations and one win).
The Irish Catholic actress, who died at age 80 Monday in Lenox, Mass., after suffering from chronic pulmonary disease, was a muse to no less a theatrical light than Tennesee Williams. He wrote three plays specifically for her.
Stapleton first made a showbiz splash by replacing an English-impaired Anna Magnani as the earthy Italian widow in the Broadway production of Williams' The Rose Tattoo. The part earned her the first of her two Tonys, and she was declared a star at age 25.
She grew to be a matriarch for the ages -- mother to Victor Garber's closeted pianist in the 1988 TV movie Liberace: Behind the Music, to Barbra Streisand's on-trial call girl in 1987's Nuts and to Dick Van Dyke's mama's-boy songwriter in 1963's Bye Bye Birdie.
She did schmaltzy (as one of the Florida retirees who discover an alien-planted fountain of youth in 1985's Cocoon and its 1988 sequel) and she did smart (onstage opposite George C. Scott as three different spatting couples in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite).
Stapleton, often confused with Jean Stapleton of TV's All in the Family, was one of those performers who looked middle-aged even in her 20s. "I was born old," she once told an interviewer. She utilized her plump figure and homey features while specializing in supporting characters who surprised with steely reserve, emotional depth and forthright wit. She was content with her second-tier status. As son Daniel Allentuck says, "I don't think she ever had unrealistic aspirations about her career."
Stapleton was quite a character herself. After three previous tries, she was given a supporting Oscar for her political activist Emma Goldman in 1981's Reds. Stunned, she declared, "I want to thank ... everybody I ever met in my entire life." Asked how it felt, she replied, "Not nearly as exciting as it would be if I were acknowledged as one of the greatest (lovers) in the world."
Hollywood first discovered Stapleton in 1958, when she made her big-screen debut as a woeful writer who has an affair with Montgomery Clift's advice columnist in Lonelyhearts and scored her first Oscar nomination.
But her film career didn't take off until 1970's Airport. As the fretful wife of bomb smuggler Van Heflin, she landed both a box-office smash and her second Oscar bid. Woody Allen made her the life-affirming centerpiece of his Bergman-esque ode, 1978's Interiors, resulting in her third nomination.
Stapleton found less success in her offscreen life, including two divorces, numerous affairs, years of therapy and struggles with alcoholism. Her no-nonsense approach to her profession served her well, though. As she wrote in her candid 1995 autobiography Hell of a Life, "I've been asked repeatedly what the 'key' to acting is, and as far as I'm concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake."
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