Bethel Leslie

Jane Bethel Leslie (August 3, 1929 – November 28, 1999) was an American actress and screenwriter born in New York, New York. Her father, Warren Leslie, worked as a lawyer, and her mother, Jane Leslie, was a newspaperwoman. She had a brother, writer Warren Leslie. Leslie attended the Brearley School in New York City, where, at age thirteen, she was discovered by director George Abbott, who cast her in the play Snafu in 1944. Her Broadway career would span more than four decades, from that debut through 1986.

Leslie's stage credits included Goodbye, My Fancy (1948), The Time of the Cuckoo (1952), Inherit the Wind (1955), The Brass Ring, But, Seriously..., Catch Me If You Can (1965), and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1986). In 1950, she left a television role playing Cornelia Otis Skinner in The Girls after two months to appear alongside Helen Hayes in The Wisteria Trees, Joshua Logan's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Her 1986 portrayal of a drug-addicted mother in Long Day's Journey Into Night earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Leslie began working in television during the 1940s and became a frequent presence on anthology series throughout the early and mid-1950s, including Studio One and Playhouse 90. She appeared with Ronald Reagan and Stafford Repp in the 1960 CBS episode "The Way Home" on The DuPont Show with June Allyson, and in 1962 portrayed Martha Hastings in the Rawhide episode "The Long Count." She made three guest appearances on Perry Mason, playing the client in each: Janet Morris and Evelyn Girard in two separate 1958 episodes, and Sylvia Sutton in a 1960 episode. Leslie guest-starred across a wide range of western series, among them Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Maverick, The Rifleman, The Wild Wild West, Have Gun – Will Travel, Wagon Train, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Bat Masterson, Riverboat, Stagecoach West, Pony Express, The Texan, Trackdown, Mackenzie's Raiders, The Man from Blackhawk, and The High Chaparral.

Her dramatic television work extended to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Fugitive, Richard Diamond Private Detective, Ben Casey, Route 66, Mannix, Bus Stop, The Eleventh Hour, The Lloyd Bridges Show, One Step Beyond, Thriller, Empire, Straightaway, Target: The Corruptors!, The Investigators, The Man and the Challenge, Adventures in Paradise, and The 1964 NBC western Daniel Boone. She became a regular on the NBC soap opera The Doctors, taking over the role of Maggie Powers from Ann Williams, and held recurring roles on Another World and All My Children. She also appeared in television adaptations of In Cold Blood and Saint Maybe.

As a member of the repertory company on NBC's The Richard Boone Show (1963–1964), Leslie received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her work in the episode "Statement of Fact." A poll of media critics and editors named her Most Promising New Talent in Radio Television Daily's 1963 All-American Favorites—Television. She also received a Laurel Award nomination in 1964 and a CableACE Award nomination in 1988.

In addition to performing, Leslie worked as a television writer. She served as head writer for The Secret Storm in 1970 and scripted episodes for Gunsmoke, Bracken's World, Barnaby Jones, McCloud, The New Land, Matt Helm, and Falcon Crest. Producer Howard Christie described her in 1970 as a good actress who had turned into a fine scriptwriter.

Leslie was married to director Andrew McCullough, with whom she had one daughter, Leslie McCullough. She died of cancer at age seventy in her Manhattan apartment on November 28, 1999.