Julie Harris, famed stage, screen, and television actress whose career spanned 60 years, passed away yesterday of congestive heart failure. Noted for her acting range and intensity, Ms. Harris was one of few actresses that went from the Broadway stage to the big screen. Some of her most memorable films include The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, and East of Eden, which set the stage for her close friendship with co-star James Dean.
Despite a successful film career, Ms. Harris' true calling was the Broadway stage and she was repeatedly acknowledged for her talent on the stage. She received ten Tony Award nominations, more than any other performed, and won five Tony Awards for her various works. In 2006, Ms. Harris spoke of her love for the stage; "The Stage! I knew it was where I wanted to be, I loved it all. It became this great source of nourishment, spiritual nourishment, for me. I want to touch people with the meaning of life. What is thrilling about the theater is that it's a forum where people come and for those two or three hours belong to something, to ideas, to a feeling of being a member of the human race."
On television, Ms. Harris frequently had episodic work and appeared and various shows in guest-starring roles. In 1980, Ms. Harris accepted the role of Lilimae Clements on the CBS primetime soap opera Knots Landing.
For seven years, Ms. Harris portrayed Lilimae Clements, mother to the show's main heroine Valene Ewing. Lilimae was a second-rate saloon singer who pursued her musical dreams at the cost of her children, abandoning them at a young age. The mother-daughter relationship was estranged when Lilimae was first introduced but the two reconciled shortly. During her run on the nighttime soap, Lilimae provided support and love to her daughter Valene's problems and dilemmas (Poor Val always had something happen to her each week). Lilimae confronted her own problems on the show as well. She runs over a murderer, Chip Roberts, after learning he killed a popular singer, and then she is carted off to a psychiatric hospital in order to avoid jail time. Upon her release, she meets her new son-in-law Ben Gibson and immediately is at odds with him on just about everything. Things slowly begin to improve when her abandoned son, Joshua Rush, arrives in town. Things are going swell until he marries a pretty lady named Cathy and becomes a televangelist. Joshua becomes unstable and violent towards his wife and is about to kill her when Lilimae stops him, and causes him to fall off the roof during an argument. Ms. Harris had some great moments on the show, and it further demonstrated the caliber of an actress that she was on and off screen.
Julie Harris was 87.
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