Kate Harrington

Kate Harrington (December 8, 1902 – November 23, 1978) was an American actress whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across several decades. Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, she pursued formal training in dramatics at the Bush Conservatory in Chicago. Her first professional engagement followed three years later, when she was cast in the lead role of a J.C. Nugent Company production of Kempy.

Before establishing herself on the New York stage, Harrington spent twelve years working in Hollywood. Her film output during this period included the Scattergood Baines comedy series starring Guy Kibbee, the biographical musical Rhapsody in Blue, and a number of Tim Holt westerns. Her screen roles in this era ranged from Gertrude Brown in Scattergood Baines (1941) to Martha MacLeod in Riding the Wind (1942) and Maggie in Come on Danger (1942).

Harrington made her Broadway debut in 1943 in Slightly Married, a farce in which she co-starred with Leon Ames. Subsequent Broadway appearances included Buy Me Blue Ribbons in 1951 and Minor Miracle in 1965. Her most substantial Broadway engagement came with The Happiest Millionaire, a comedy in which she originated the role of Emma opposite Walter Pidgeon, playing the production from 1956 to 1957 and continuing with the show's national tour. Off-Broadway, Harrington appeared in Morning's at Seven, The Plough and the Stars, The Days and Nights of Beebee Fenstermaker, Not a Way of Life, and Stephen D, a play adapted from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Film roles continued intermittently through the late 1960s and 1970s. Harrington appeared as May Cameron in Rachel, Rachel (1968) and as a woman in Madigan (1968). She followed those with an uncredited role in Love Story (1970), Nurse Dunne in The Hospital (1971), Mrs. Carter in Child's Play (1972), and Anna Clark in The Sentinel (1977), which served as her final film role.

Television work began in 1956 with appearances including two performances as Sister Tomera in Hallmark Hall of Fame productions of The Cradle Song, first in 1956 and again in 1960, and Ford Star Jubilee's This Happy Breed in 1956. On daytime television, Harrington became the second actress to portray Katherine "Kate" Martin on All My Children, holding the role from early February through August 1970. She subsequently played Marion Conway, the second actress in that role, on Guiding Light from 1971 to 1972. Additional television credits included NBC Experiment in Television: Big Sur (1969), Great Performances: The Rimers of Eldritch (1972), in which she played Martha Truit, All About Welfare: The Resolution of Mossie Wax (1973), and Wide World of Mystery: And the Bones Came Together (1973).

Harrington died in New York City on November 23, 1978, from complications of a stroke she had suffered the previous year.