Lois Kibbee

Lois Kibbee (July 13, 1922 – October 18, 1993) was an American actress and writer born in Wheeling, West Virginia. A niece of actor Guy Kibbee, she built a career spanning theater, radio, film, and television over several decades.

Kibbee made her Broadway appearance in 1927 in the play Venus. Beyond Broadway, she pursued a wide range of stage work, founding Playhouse, Inc., a community theater in El Paso, Texas, in 1951. She also performed with the Circle Theater in Hollywood and appeared in summer stock productions in Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago. Her radio work included appearances on Lux Radio Theatre, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and other programs.

In television, Kibbee became best known for her work in daytime drama. She played wealthy Geraldine Whitney Saxon on the CBS/ABC soap opera The Edge of Night during two separate stints, from 1970 to 1971 and again from 1973 until the series concluded in 1984. Between those runs, she portrayed Emily Moore Matson on NBC's Somerset from 1972 to 1973, a character whose eccentric family figured into a murder storyline involving a character known as Jingles the Clown. Later in her career, Kibbee took on the role of Elizabeth Sanders on ABC's One Life to Live, appearing from 1986 to 1989. Her performance on The Edge of Night earned her four Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, in 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1984. In film, she appeared in the 1980 comedy Caddyshack as Mrs. Smails.

Kibbee also worked as a writer on The Edge of Night and briefly contributed scripts to the CBS soap Capitol while Henry Slesar served as its head writer. She co-authored The Bennett Playbill, a book about the Bennett acting family with a focus on Joan Bennett, and served as ghostwriter for The Christine Jorgensen Story. In 1982, she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing Team alongside Slesar. At the time of her death, Kibbee had been working on a book about her family's history as performers. She died of a brain tumor on October 18, 1993, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.