Judith Lowry

Judith Carter Lowry, born Judith Carter Ives on July 27, 1890, at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was an American actress whose Broadway career spanned five decades, from 1916 to 1966. Her father, Francis Joseph Ives, was a career U.S. Army surgeon who reached the rank of major and saw service in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War before retiring to Washington, D.C., where he died in 1908. Her mother was Mildred Elizabeth Megeath. Through her father's line, Lowry descended from Asahel Ives, a soldier of the American Revolutionary War.

Lowry began her stage work in 1913 with a stock company in Washington, D.C. Her Broadway appearances over the following decades included productions of Nightstick, The Light of Asia, Beyond the Horizon, Easter One Day More, and The Goat Song, among others. She gave birth to her first child in 1921 and stepped away from acting to raise her family, which eventually grew to nine children. When her youngest turned 18, she returned to the stage in 1952, resuming a career that would ultimately extend into her eighties. Among her later stage credits was Archibald MacLeish's J.B. on Broadway and an Off-Broadway production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.

Her screen work accumulated to nearly 30 film and television roles. She appeared uncredited in Valley of the Dolls in 1967, playing Aunt Amy, and went on to take roles in The Anderson Tapes and Cold Turkey. It was television, however, that brought Lowry her widest recognition. Cast as Mother Dexter on the CBS sitcom Phyllis, starring Cloris Leachman, she became closely identified with the sharp-tongued, no-nonsense character during the show's run in the 1970s. One of her final filmed appearances was the episode titled "Mother Dexter's Wedding," in which veteran actor Burt Mustin played her bridegroom, Arthur Lanson — an episode that also marked Mustin's last screen appearance. By the time it aired in December 1976, Lowry had already died, and Mustin, then 92, was too ill to watch it. Five additional episodes featuring Lowry aired after that broadcast.

Lowry died of a heart attack on November 29, 1976, collapsing on a Greenwich Village street while walking with her son Rayphield Semmes Lowry. She was 86 years old. She was buried beside her husband, Rudd Lowry, at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.