Kathleen Freeman

Kathleen Freeman (February 17, 1919 – August 23, 2001) was an American actress born in Chicago, Illinois, whose career spanned more than fifty years. Her father, Frank Freeman, led Freeman's Forty Musical Minstrels in 1918, and her mother, Jessica Dixon, was a soprano who performed for American troops in England, France, and post-war Germany under the name "The Overseas Girl." The couple married in 1922. Freeman began performing at age two in her parents' vaudeville act, Dixon and Freeman, and by her own account did not begin attending school until around age ten, when she was "caught." She later enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she majored in music with the intention of becoming a classical pianist before discovering theater.

Following college, Freeman joined the Circle Players on Santa Monica Boulevard, a group that grew out of her UCLA connections and eventually achieved international recognition. From that company she helped found two additional theater organizations, Player's Ring and Gallery Theater. Her stage work encompassed national tours of Deathtrap, Annie, in which she played Miss Hannigan, and Woman of the Year, the latter alongside Lauren Bacall. Her Broadway career extended from 1978 to 2000 and included appearances in 13 Rue de l'Amour, Woman of the Year, Annie, and Deathtrap. Her final Broadway role was Jeannette Burmeister, the company pianist, in The Full Monty. That performance earned Freeman a 2001 Tony Award nomination and a Theatre World Award, a prize typically given to younger performers. Weakened by illness, she withdrew from the cast and died of lung cancer five days after her final performance, on August 23, 2001, at Lenox Hill Hospital at age 82. She was cremated and her ashes interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Throughout her screen career Freeman was recognized for portraying maids, secretaries, teachers, nurses, busybodies, and battle-axe relatives, almost always in comic roles. She was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player in the early 1950s, appearing largely in small or uncredited parts. Among her early film work was an uncredited role in the 1952 MGM musical Singin' in the Rain, in which she played diction coach Phoebe Dinsmore opposite Jean Hagen. Beginning with the 1954 film 3 Ring Circus, Freeman became a recurring foil for Jerry Lewis, ultimately appearing opposite him in eleven films, among them The Nutty Professor, The Disorderly Orderly, and The Errand Boy. She reprised her connection to that franchise more than three decades later with a brief appearance in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. One of her most recognized film roles was Sister Mary Stigmata, known as the Penguin, in John Landis's The Blues Brothers (1980), a character she repeated in Blues Brothers 2000 (1998). Additional film credits included The Missouri Traveler (1958), The Fly (1958), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), Dragnet (1987), Innerspace (1987), Hocus Pocus (1993), Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994), and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). Her final film role was a voice part in the animated feature Shrek (2001).

Freeman's television career was equally extensive. Her first television job came in 1948, when Peggy Webber hired her for the live local series Treasures of Literature after seeing her perform at the Circle Theatre. She went on to appear in regular or recurring roles across decades of American television, including six episodes of The Bob Cummings Show as Bertha Krause, Topper as Katie the maid, and The Donna Reed Show as busybody neighbor Mrs. Celia Wilgus. She appeared three times on the children's program Buckskin in 1958–59, five times on The Lucy Show in 1964, and in a recurring role on Hogan's Heroes as Frau Gertrude Linkmeyer. In 1973 she co-starred with Dom DeLuise in the sitcom Lotsa Luck. Her later television appearances included episodes of The Golden Girls, Roseanne, ER, Home Improvement, and Coach, among many others. From 1988 to 2001 she participated in more than fifty productions of the California Artists Radio Theatre for Peggy Webber, recording live performances of classic books and plays for KPCC, KPFK NPR Playhouse, and National Public Radio. In her final years she held a regular voice role in the animated series As Told by Ginger, in which she played Mrs. Gordon; Freeman died during production of the episode in which the character was written to retire, and the script was rewritten so that the character died as well, with the episode dedicated to Freeman's memory. Freeman never married and had no children.