Janice Rule

Mary Janice Rule was born on August 15, 1931, in Norwood, Ohio, to parents of Irish origin whose father worked as a dealer in industrial diamonds. She died on October 17, 2003, from a cerebral hemorrhage and was cremated following her death. Over the course of her life she built careers as both an actress and a psychotherapist.

Rule began her performing life as a dancer, taking a job at the Chez Paree nightclub in Chicago at age 15, where her earnings funded ballet lessons. She also studied acting at the Chicago Professional School. Her Broadway career began in 1949 with the production of Miss Liberty, and she appeared on Broadway through 1961. On January 8, 1951, she was featured on the cover of Life magazine as a performer to watch in the entertainment industry.

Warner Bros. signed Rule to a contract, and her first credited screen role came in Goodbye, My Fancy (1951), in which she played Virginia opposite Joan Crawford in the lead. Crawford treated Rule poorly during production, though she later wrote Rule a letter of apology. The studio contract lapsed after only two films. Rule spoke publicly about her difficulties with the studios' attitudes toward women's appearance in the early 1950s, describing her resistance to makeup artists, hairdressers, and the publicity department as rooted in a fear of losing her individuality.

Her most significant early Broadway credit was the original 1953 production of William Inge's Picnic, in which she played Madge Owens, the role later taken by Kim Novak in the film adaptation. The cast also included Paul Newman in his Broadway debut. Her commitment to Picnic led her to decline the role that Eva Marie Saint ultimately played in On the Waterfront (1954). Rule explained that she could not perform on stage each night while also shooting a film during the day and give her best to both. Other Broadway productions included The Flowering Peach, The Happiest Girl in the World, The Carefree Tree, and Michael V. Gazzo's The Night Circus, a 1958 production that ran for only one week but brought Rule into contact with actor Ben Gazzara, who became her third husband.

Her film work in the 1950s included A Woman's Devotion (1956), the western Gun for a Coward (1957), and Bell, Book and Candle (1958), in which she played the fiancée who loses publisher Shep Henderson, portrayed by James Stewart, to the witch Gillian Holroyd, played by Kim Novak. She also starred opposite Yul Brynner in the western Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964). Among her later film roles were Emily Stewart in The Chase (1966), Sheila Sommers in The Ambushers (1967), Burt Lancaster's bitter former lover in The Swimmer (1968), Willie in Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977) alongside Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, journalist Kate Newman in Costa-Gavras's political thriller Missing (1982), and Kevin Costner's mother in American Flyers (1985). In total she appeared in more than 20 films.

Television credits included the role of Helen Foley in the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare as a Child," which aired on April 29, 1960, and a 1960 appearance in the Checkmate episode "The Mask of Vengeance," in which she played Elena Nardos, the roommate of Cloris Leachman's character. She appeared in three episodes of Route 66 as different characters, and played two separate roles across two episodes of The Fugitive with David Janssen, "Wife Killer" and "The Walls of Night." She also had a major role as Nancy Reade in "Three Bells to Perdido," the debut episode of Have Gun – Will Travel.

In her personal life, Rule had a brief engagement to actor Farley Granger in 1955, the same year the two appeared together in the Broadway production of The Carefree Tree. She was briefly married during 1955 to television and film writer N. Richard Nash. Her second marriage, to writer Robert Thom in 1956, produced one daughter, Kate, before ending in divorce in 1961. That same year she married Ben Gazzara; they had one daughter together before divorcing in 1979. Actor Ralph Meeker, who had played Hal in Picnic, was also a partner of Rule's during this period.

Rule developed an interest in psychoanalysis during the 1960s and began formal studies in 1973, specializing in the treatment of fellow actors. In 1983 she received her PhD from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute in Los Angeles. She maintained a psychotherapy practice in both New York and Los Angeles and continued to act occasionally until her death.