Linda Carlson

Linda Carlson (May 12, 1945 – October 26, 2021) was an American actress whose career spanned stage, television, and film across several decades. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, she was raised in Minnesota and was of Swedish descent. She earned a bachelor's degree in speech and dramatic arts from the University of Iowa, after which she taught for several months at a high school in Flint, Michigan. She subsequently relocated to New York City, where she completed a master's degree at the NYU School of the Arts and later taught acting there. It was also at NYU that she met actor-director Philip Charles MacKenzie, whom she married; the two eventually divorced. She later married Jim Hart, a former Marine Corps tank officer who became an IT specialist.

Carlson began her professional theater career with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York before spending a season at the Repertory Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her regional stage work extended to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, Canada, the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Indiana Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis. Her Off-Broadway credits included The Harangues (1969), The Death of Lord Chatterly (1973), Miss Julie (1973), Demons: A Possession (1974), Winner Take All (1975), and Light Up the Sky (1990).

On Broadway, Carlson appeared in three productions between 1973 and 1976. She portrayed Crete in Full Circle in 1973 and served as an understudy in the double bill A Memory of Two Mondays / 27 Wagons Full of Cotton in 1976, the same year she also appeared in They Knew What They Wanted.

Her television work included a starring role on Westside Medical and the recurring role of Katie McKenna on Kaz. On Newhart, she played Bev Dutton, the manager of the small Vermont television station where Bob Newhart's character hosted a Sunday afternoon interview program. In 1977, she appeared in the Kojak episode "Cry for the Kids" as Ellen Sherback. A 1980 episode of WKRP in Cincinnati titled "Hotel Oceanview" featured Carlson as a woman attracted to station salesman Herb Tarlek, played by Frank Bonner, who is unsettled upon learning they had been on the same high school football team, as she had since undergone a sex change. She also appeared in the 1995 sitcom Double Rush and had a role on Murder One, in which she played Judge Beth Bornstein from 1995 to 1997.

Her film credits included Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), in which she played a nosy neighbor; The Pickle (1993), in which she appeared as Bernadette; The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), in which she portrayed Aunt Pearl; and Roadside Assistance (2001), in which she played the Queen of Hearts.

Carlson died on October 26, 2021, in Gaylordsville, Connecticut, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 76.