Irene Dailey

Irene Dailey (September 12, 1920 – September 24, 2008) was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than five decades. Born in New York City to Helen Theresa (née Ryan) and Daniel James Dailey, she was one of four siblings; her brother Dan Dailey became a well-known actor. Dailey began performing in vaudeville at the age of eight and gained further experience in summer stock productions during her teenage years. She later studied under Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen.

Her path to Broadway success was a long one. By her early forties she had appeared in roughly a dozen Broadway productions without achieving a significant breakthrough, and for seventeen of her first twenty-three years as a professional actress she supported herself by working as a waitress. During another five-year period she operated a shop on New York's East Side where she made and sold lampshades. She also underwent psychoanalysis during this stretch of her career. In 1965 she served as both teacher and director at the School of the Actor's Company in New York.

Dailey's Broadway career extended from 1943 to 1996 and included appearances in Truckline Cafe, the melodrama Nine Girls, the drama Miss Lonelyhearts, Idiot's Delight, The Good Woman of Szechwan, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running. Her most celebrated stage role came in 1964 when she originated the role of Nettie Cleary in The Subject Was Roses, the Tony Award-winning drama. She received the 1966 Drama Desk Award for her work in Rooms. In 1971 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. Later in her stage career she appeared in a Broadway revival of Strindberg's The Father alongside Frank Langella, playing the nurse who manipulates his character into a straitjacket as he descends into madness, a performance that earned strong critical notices.

On television, Dailey joined the cast of the CBS daytime serial The Edge of Night in 1969, playing Pamela Stewart. In 1974 she joined Another World on NBC as the fourth actress to portray Liz Matthews, the family matriarch. She remained a central figure on the series through the summer of 1986, returned in November 1987 on a non-contract basis, appeared prominently in the show's 25th and 30th anniversary broadcasts, and made her final appearance in May 1994. Her portrayal of Liz — initially a rival to Rachel for the affections of Mac Cory and later his secretary — earned her the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in 1979, with fellow Another World cast members Victoria Wyndham and Beverlee McKinsey among her nominees that year.

Her film work included No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), Five Easy Pieces (1970), and The Amityville Horror (1979). Dailey never married and had no children. She died on September 24, 2008, in Santa Rosa, California, from colon cancer, and had been a resident of Guerneville at the time of her death.