Kim Hunter

Kim Hunter, born Janet Cole on November 12, 1922, in Detroit, Michigan, was an American actress whose career spanned theatre, film, and television across six decades. The daughter of Grace Lind, a concert pianist, and Donald Cole, a refrigeration engineer, Hunter was of English and Welsh descent and attended Miami Beach High School before pursuing a professional acting career. She died in New York City on September 11, 2002, of a heart attack at the age of 79.

Hunter made her film debut in the 1943 horror production The Seventh Victim, and her first starring role came opposite David Niven in the 1946 British fantasy film A Matter of Life and Death. Her stage career on Broadway extended from 1947 to 1996 and included productions such as Darkness at Noon, The Chase, The Children's Hour, The Tender Trap, and Write Me a Murder. The role that defined her early career, however, was Stella Kowalski in the original 1947 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1948, she joined Streetcar co-stars Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, along with 47 others, as one of the founding members of the newly established Actors Studio. When she reprised the role of Stella Kowalski for the 1951 film adaptation, she earned both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1952, Hunter co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in Deadline USA. Her career momentum was interrupted, however, when she was blacklisted from film and television during the 1950s amid suspicions of communist sympathies during the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee. As the HUAC's influence waned in 1956, she returned to prominence by co-starring in Rod Serling's Peabody Award-winning teleplay "Requiem for a Heavyweight" on Playhouse 90, a production that also won multiple Emmy Awards including Best Single Program of the Year. The following year she appeared opposite Mickey Rooney in the live CBS television broadcast of The Comedian, another Serling drama directed by John Frankenheimer.

Beginning in 1968, Hunter took on the role of Zira, a chimpanzee scientist, in the science fiction film Planet of the Apes, subsequently reprising the character in Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1970 and Escape from the Planet of the Apes in 1971. That same year she appeared in a Columbo episode titled "Suitable for Framing" and in an episode of Cannon. In 1974, she starred in the television film Born Innocent as the mother of Linda Blair's character and also appeared on Raymond Burr's Ironside. Hunter portrayed First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson in the 1979 serial drama Backstairs at the White House. Her work in daytime television included the role of Hollywood actress Nola Madison on ABC's The Edge of Night, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1980. Her final major film role came in Clint Eastwood's 1997 production Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, in which she played Betty Harty, legal secretary to Savannah lawyer Sonny Seiler.

Hunter was married twice. Her first marriage, to Marine Corps pilot William Baldwin in 1944, produced a daughter and ended in divorce two years later. In 1951 she married actor Robert Emmett, with whom she had a son in 1954 and occasionally performed in stage productions; Emmett died in 2000. Hunter's daughter became an attorney, civic leader, and former judge in Connecticut. Hunter received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 1615 Vine Street and a second for television at 1715 Vine Street.