Hope Lange, the elegant actress adept at both comedy and drama on the big screen and small, has died.
The two-time Emmy-winning star of TV's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and an Oscar nominee for the torrid melodrama Peyton Place, died Friday in Santa Monica at 70.
Her husband, theatrical producer Charles Hollerith Jr., said the cause was an infection brought on by an intestinal disorder called ischemic colitis.
Born in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, Lange came from a show-biz family--her father was a musician, her mother, an actress--and she debuted on Broadway at age 12 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Patriots.
After her father's death, her mother opened a restaurant in Greenwich Village, where Lange worked as a waitress--but her tenure there was short lived.
Lange's son, Christopher Murray, told the New York Times that Eleanor Roosevelt was walking her dog Fala by the restaurant, when the Scottish terrier refused to budge, apparently intrigued by the smells within. That led Hope Lange taking the dog for a walk--an image captured by shutterbugs and leading to Lange's early career as a model.
Her first movie role was in 1956, as a waitress who befriends Marilyn Monroe's dance-hall girl, in the bittersweet romance Bus Stop. The movie also starred Don Murray, to whom Lange was married from 1956 to 1961.
Murray says Lange was "considered a great beauty who was also a serious and dedicated actor who didn't pay attention to being glamorous." Nonetheless, her good looks were enough to unsettle the famously blonde Monroe, who reportedly requested Lange's naturally blonde hair be dyed a light brown.
Two years after her big-screen debut, Lange earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for playing a high school student from the wrong side of the tracks, who is raped by her stepfather and then accused of murdering him, in Peyton Place, an adaptation of the Grace Metalious book about the sexual goings-on in a small town.
Her other major movie roles included the World War II drama The Young Lions opposite Montgomery Clift; the melodramatic The Best of Everything with Joan Crawford; and Wild in the Country as a psychiatrist emotionally drawn to a troubled young man, played by Elvis Presley.
But Lange's greatest popularity came for playing Carolyn Muir in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The comedy series costarred Edward Mulhare as the old sea captain ghost who grows fond of the charming widow and her children. It ran from 1968 to 1970, earning Lange Emmys for Leading Actress in a Comedy Series in 1969 and 1970.
After the demise of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Lange segued to CBS' 1971-74 sitcom The New Dick Van Dyke Show. She played Jenny Preston, cohost of a talk show with husband Dick, played by Van Dyke. She refused to sign on for a fourth season after network censors grew concerned over an episode that implied the Prestons had sex.
"They won't air the best show we did all season," Lange stated. "If a happily married couple can't make love...they have three children, for Pete's sake! Was that by immaculate conception."
Later Lange roles included one that launched a franchise--as Charles Bronson's slain wife in the vigilante vehicle Death Wish--as well as Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge and David Lynch's Blue Velvet (she was Laura Dern's mom).
Lange's other stage roles included the 1977 Broadway drama Same Time, Next Year and the Los Angeles run of the 1987 political drama The Best Man.
With older roles generally scarce in Hollywood, Lange's visibility declined in recent years. "Fortunately," she said in a 1993 interview, "I don't feel validated just when I work. For me, if I never worked again, it wouldn't matter all that much."
Her last movie role was in 1994 playing a senator in the thriller Clear and Present Danger.
After her divorce from Murray, Lange was married from 1963 to 1971 to director and producer Alan. J. Pakula. In 1986, she married Hollerith, who survives her along with her two children, Christopher and Patricia Murray, and two grandchildren.