Dennis Letts

Dennis Letts (September 5, 1934 – February 22, 2008) was an American actor and college professor born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He pursued two distinct careers over the course of his life, spending several decades in academia before transitioning to acting in his fifties.

Letts graduated from Wagoner High School in 1952 and subsequently enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he served until 1956. His education was supported in part by the G.I. Bill, through which he earned a bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He later completed a master's degree at the University of Tulsa and a doctorate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and he was also the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. The majority of his academic career was spent at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma, where he taught writing and English for more than thirty years. In 1958, he married novelist Billie Gipson, with whom he had three sons: Dana, Tracy, a playwright, and Shawn, a jazz musician and composer. Letts also served as an editor for his wife's novels, which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list and received various literary awards.

Letts began acting around the age of fifty, initially performing in university and community theater productions while still employed as a professor. After retiring from teaching, he pursued acting as a full second career, accumulating credits in more than forty films and television productions. His screen work included a role in the 2000 film Cast Away, an appearance in Where the Heart Is, a film adapted from a novel written by his wife, and a debut in Bloodsuckers from Outer Space, a science fiction comedy written and directed by Glen Coburn.

His most prominent stage role came when he originated the character of Beverly Weston in August: Osage County, a play written by his son Tracy Letts. The character, described as an Oklahoma patriarch whose unexplained disappearance draws his fractured family together, anchored the production when it first opened at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in the summer of 2007. The play and Letts's performance received strong critical notices. Tracy Letts's authorship of the play earned him a Pulitzer Prize, and the production went on to win the Tony Award.

In September 2007, Letts was diagnosed with lung cancer. Despite the diagnosis and its treatment, he remained with the production as it transferred to Broadway, where it opened in December 2007 and earned some of the season's most favorable reviews. He continued performing eight shows per week in New York City through February 2008. Letts died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on February 22, 2008, at the age of 73. A memorial service was held in Wagoner, Oklahoma. He was survived by his wife, Billie, who died in 2014, and his three sons, Tracy, Dana, and Shawn.