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Sandy Dennis, Anne Bancroft, Zoe Caldwell, Viola Davis, Colleen Dewhurst, Maureen Stapleton, Irene Worth, Audra McDonald, and Laurie Metcalf are the only winners of Tony Awards for both Best Actress in a Play and Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Early life

Dennis was born in Hastings, Nebraska, the daughter of Yvonne (née Hudson), a secretary, and Jack Dennis, a postal clerk.^[2]^[3] She had a brother, Frank. Dennis grew up in Kenesaw, Nebraska and Lincoln, Nebraska, graduating from Lincoln High School (Lincoln, Nebraska) in 1955.^[4] She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska, appearing in the Lincoln Community Theater Group before moving to New York City at the age of 19^[5]. She studied acting at HB Studio^[6] in New York City.

Career

Early career

She had an early break when cast as an understudy in the Broadway production of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs by William Inge directed by Elia Kazan. Kazan cast Dennis in her first feature film, Splendor in the Grass (1961), playing Kay.

Dennis was cast in Face of a Hero (1960) on Broadway alongside Jack Lemmon but it only had a short run. The Complaisant Lover (1961–62) by Graham Greene was more successful, running for 101 performances; Michael Redgrave and Googie Withers were also in the cast.

Broadway stardom

Dennis achieved Broadway fame with her leading role in Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns (1962–63), for which she won a Tony award for her performance alongside Jason Robards. The show ran for 428 performances.

Around this time, she guest starred on episodes of the TV series Naked City ("Carrier", 1963), The Fugitive ("The Other Side of the Mountain", 1963), Arrest and Trial ("Somewhat Lower Than the Angels" 1964), and Mr. Broadway ("Don't Mention My Name in Sheboygan", 1964).

Dennis was the lead of the Broadway comedy Any Wednesday (1964–66), which ran for 983 performances and won her a second Tony.

Film stardom

Dennis' second film role was as Honey, the fragile, neurotic young wife of George Segal's character, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Directed by Mike Nichols, the film was a huge critical and commercial success and Dennis won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role.

Dennis returned to the stage in a production of The Three Sisters (1966) with Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley that went to London and was filmed.

Dennis' first lead role in a movie was in Up the Down Staircase (1967), directed by Robert Mulligan which was a box office success. So too was The Fox (1967), directed by Mark Rydell. In 1967 Dennis was voted the 18th biggest star in the US.^[7]

Dennis briefly returned to Broadway to star in Daphne in Cottage D (1967) which only had a short run.

She starred in Sweet November (1968), as a terminally ill woman who takes multiple lovers, and made a TV version of the play A Hatful of Rain (1968).

Dennis went to London to star in A Touch of Love (1969) which flopped at the box office. So too did That Cold Day in the Park (1969) despite being directed by Robert Altman. However The Out-of-Towners (1970), a Neil Simon comedy with Jack Lemmon, was a hit.

TV movies and film support roles

She went back to Broadway for How the Other Half Loves (1971) by Alan Ayckbourn which ran for over 100 performances, then did another TV movie Something Evil (1972) directed by Steven Spielberg.

Let Me Hear You Smile (1973) on Broadway only lasted one performance, but Absurd Person Singular (1974–76) was a big hit, running 591 performances.

In 1974 she played Joan of Arc in the pilot of Witness to Yesterday, Canadian Patrick Watson's series of interviews with great figures out of the past.

Dennis was in Mr. Sycamore (1975) with Jason Robards and had a small role in God Told Me To (1976) from Larry Cohen. Dennis' performance in Nasty Habits (1977) drew harsh criticism from Vincent Canby in the New York Times.^[8]

Dennis guest starred in Police Story ("Day of Terror... Night of Fear", 1978), and starred in the TV movies Perfect Gentlemen (1979) (written by Nora Ephron), and Wilson's Reward (1981). On Broadway she briefly joined the cast of the long running Same Time, Next Year.

She had a good part in Alan Alda's The Four Seasons (1981) and was in The Supporting Cast (1981) on Broadway for Gene Saks. She was in the stage production and film version of Robert Altman's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982).

Later career

Dennis appeared on Young People's Specials ("The Trouble with Mother", 1985), The Love Boat ("Roommates/Heartbreaker/Out of the Blue", 1985), Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Arthur, or the Gigolo", 1985) and The Equalizer ("Out of the Past", 1986). She had a supporting role in The Execution (1985), Laughter in the Dark (1986), Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), 976-EVIL (1989) and Parents (1989).

In 1991, she played her final role in the film The Indian Runner, which marked Sean Penn's debut as a film director.

Acting style

A life member of The Actors Studio^[9] and an advocate of method acting, Dennis was often described as neurotic and mannered in her performances; her signature style included running words together and oddly stopping and starting sentences, suddenly going up and down octaves as she spoke, and fluttering her hands. Walter Kerr famously remarked that she treated sentences as "weak, injured things" that needed to be slowly helped "across the street"; Pauline Kael said that she "has made an acting style of postnasal drip." Nonetheless, William Goldman, in his book The Season, referred to her as a quintessential "critics' darling" who got rave reviews no matter how unusual her acting and questionable her choice of material. During her stint in Any Wednesday, Kerr said the following: "Let me tell you about Sandy Dennis. There should be one in every home."

Personal life

Dennis lived with prominent jazz musician Gerry Mulligan from 1965 until they split up in 1974. She lived with actor Eric Roberts from 1980 to 1985.

In an interview with People magazine in 1989, Dennis revealed she and Gerry Mulligan had suffered a miscarriage in 1965 and went on to say, "if I'd been a mother, I would have loved the child, but I just didn't have any connection with it when I was pregnant…I never, ever wanted children. It would have been like having an elephant."^[10]

After Dennis' death, she was identified as bisexual by Hollywood historians.^[11]^[12]^[13] According to Dennis' biographer, Peter Shelley, Eric Roberts, upon being asked if Dennis was bisexual, spoke of her telling him about her many lesbian relationships and said that she, "appreciated the beauty of women. But Sandy also liked and appreciated what a very, very young man could do to a woman, I suppose."^[14] This was published more than twenty years after her death.

During Dennis' lifetime, in-depth published interviews with her, such as one with The Christian Science Monitor during her stint performing in an ensemble cast at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1981, made no mention of a close relationship with a female. That interview included the following exchange about her marital status:

She says, "It's not – I'm not fussy about that – the truth is I was never married. We had a long association but we never married..."

But there it is in Current Biography: "In June, 1965, after a three-week courtship, Sandy Dennis was married to Gerry Mulligan, the jazz saxophonist and composer."

She sits bolt upright and repeats: "I've never been married. And I'm not fussy about it. It's just the truth is, that I was never married. It isn't true that I was ever married, which means that I never got a divorce. The newspapers jumped to that conclusion. It's so hard to get to somebody and say...Oh, they're so funny about it."^[15]}}

Death

Sandy Dennis died from ovarian cancer at her home in Westport, Connecticut, at age 54.^[16]

Filmography

Film

Television

Theater

See also

References

1. ^{{cite book|author=Peter Shelley|title=Sandy Dennis: The Life and Films|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fd-xAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1955|date=8 November 2013|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-1-4766-0589-0}}
2. ^Sandy Dennis Biography (1937–1992)
3. ^[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1916&dat=19920304&id=0gYhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k3YFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1443,413003]
4. ^{{cite book|last=Lincoln High School|title=The Links, vol. 39|year=1955|publisher=Lincoln High School|location=Lincoln, NE|page=38}}
5. ^[https://movies.yahoo.com/movie/contributor/1800011780/bio Sandy Dennis]. Yahoo Movies.
6. ^[https://hbstudio.org/about-hb-studio/alumni/ HB Studio Alumni]
7. ^'Star Glitter Is Catching' By Richard L. Coe. The Washington Post, Times Herald (1959–1973) [Washington, D.C] 07 Jan 1968: H1.
8. ^{{cite news|last1=Canby|first1=Vincent|title='Nasty Habits' of Nuns in Politics|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9901E2DB173BE63BBC4152DFB566838C669EDE|accessdate=20 March 2015|work=New York Times|date=19 March 1977}}
9. ^{{cite book|quote=|first=David |last=Garfield|title=A Player's Place: The Story of The Actors Studio|year=1980|publisher=MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc.|location=New York|isbn=0-02-542650-8|page=278|chapter=Appendix: Life Members of The Actors Studio as of January 1980}}
10. ^{{cite web|last=Hutchings|first=David|title=The Queen of Artfully Oddball Roles Finds Peace as a Cat-Crazed Recluse|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20119765,00.html|work=People Magazine|publisher=Time, Inc|accessdate=2011-08-29}}
11. ^{{cite book|last1=Stern|first1=Keith|title=Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals|date=2009|publisher=BenBella Books|location=Dallas|isbn=1933771879|page=138|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TF0Y4uACdMkC&pg=PA83}}
12. ^{{cite book|last1=Hadleigh|first1=Boze|title=Hollywood Lesbians|date=1996|publisher=Barricade Books|location=NY|isbn=1569800677|page=246}}
13. ^{{cite book|last1=Zimmerman|first1=Bonnie|title=Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1|date=1999|publisher=Routledge|location=NY|isbn=0815319207|page=375|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0EUoCrFolGcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false|accessdate=19 March 2015}}
14. ^{{cite book|last1=Shelley|first1=Peter|title=Sandy Dennis: The Life and Films|date=2013|publisher=McFarland|location=Jefferson, NC|isbn=0786471972|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fd-xAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA2000-IA13|accessdate=19 March 2015}}
15. ^{{cite news|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1981/0820/082058.html|title=Sandy Dennis; The Talent Shows, the Cats Don't|author=Sweeney, Louise|date=August 20, 1981|publisher=Christian Science Monitor|accessdate=November 25, 2016}}
16. ^Daniels, Lee A. [https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/obituaries/sandy-dennis-veteran-actress-and-prize-winner-is-dead-at-54.html?pagewanted= "Sandy Dennis, Veteran Actress And Prize Winner, Is Dead at 54"] The New York Times, March 5, 1992