Audree Norton

Audree Lauraine Norton (January 13, 1927 – April 22, 2015) was a deaf actress and educator born in Great Falls, Montana, to Lauraine (née Greenman) and Joseph Bennett. At age three, she lost her hearing as a result of spinal meningitis. Her parents divorced two years later, and she and her mother subsequently relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she was enrolled at the W. Roby Allen School in Faribault, Minnesota. That institution employed the oralism method, emphasizing speech and lip reading while prohibiting sign language. Norton's mother later learned that admission to Gallaudet College required prior attendance at the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, which was situated directly across the street from the Allen School. Norton transferred to that academy, where she was able to use sign language for the first time and thrived academically. She graduated from Gallaudet University in 1952 and went on to become one of the founding members of the National Theatre of the Deaf.

Norton's Broadway career included appearances in 1969 in Some Comments on the Harmful Effects of Tobacco and Blueprints: Projections and Perspectives. Her television work spanned several years and included a performance of an Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem set to music on An Experiment in Television, as well as roles in Mannix, Family Affair, The Man and the City, and The Streets of San Francisco. In 1967, she became the first deaf actor to have a photograph published in Time magazine.

Norton also appeared in a Kodak television commercial titled Memories, directed by Stuart Hagmann, which received a Clio Award for Best Commercial of the Year in 1974. That same year, she became the first deaf person to earn a master's degree in Rhetoric from California State University, East Bay.

In 1978, Norton auditioned for the ABC Afterschool Special Mom and Dad Can't Hear Me but was told by the casting director that the role would go to someone who could speak. She filed a complaint with the Screen Actors Guild, which prompted protests among deaf communities across the United States. Norton did not perform on television again following that incident.

In 2012, Gallaudet University awarded Norton an honorary doctorate of humane letters. She died on April 22, 2015, in Fremont, California. She and Kenneth Norton were married for sixty-three years and had three children: Nikki Rexroat, Kurt Norton, and Dane Norton, as well as two grandchildren and two great-grandsons.