Georgia Allen

Georgia Williams Allen (May 12, 1919 – January 11, 2014) was an American actress and educator born in Beaumont, Texas. After relocating through Cleveland, Ohio, she settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked as a teacher in the public school system. She graduated from Clark College in Atlanta in 1942, the same year she married Thaddius S. Allen. The couple had a daughter and a son over the course of their 67-year marriage. Allen later earned a master's degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Her acting career spanned from 1949 to 2006, beginning in local theater. For three decades, from 1949 to 1979, she was a repertory player with Atlanta University Summer Theater. Among her work there was the political satire musical Red, White and Maddox, which centered on Atlanta Governor Lester Maddox. The production originated in Atlanta before transferring to Broadway in 1969, marking Allen's sole Broadway credit.

Her screen career began in 1972 with Together for Days, in which she played the mother of Clifton Davis's character, Gus. Following a five-year hiatus, she returned to film in 1977 as Mrs. Jones in Greased Lightning. Between 1979 and 1982 she appeared in four television movies, with additional television film work continuing from the mid-1980s onward. From 1990 to 1994, she portrayed three separate characters across multiple episodes of the television series In the Heat of the Night. In 1997 she appeared in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, playing Lucille Wright, the real-life caterer of the parties hosted by Kevin Spacey's character, Jim Williams. Her final known screen appearance came in 2006, when she played Ruby in Madea's Family Reunion.

Allen received several honors during her career, including the Bronze Jubilee Award from WETV in 1979, the Ray McIver Award from the Just Us Theater in 1993, and the Legacy Award from Jomandi Productions, also in 1993. She died on January 11, 2014, having outlived her husband by five years, and is interred at Crest Lawn Cemetery in Atlanta.