Maggie McNamara

Maggie McNamara, born Marguerite McNamara on June 18, 1928, in New York City, was an American actress, model, and stage performer whose Broadway career spanned from 1951 to 1962. She was one of four children born to Timothy McNamara, of Irish descent, and Helen McNamara, who was born in England to Irish parents. Her siblings were two sisters, Helen and Cathleen, and a brother, Robert. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old. McNamara attended Textile High School in New York, where her modeling career began after agent John Robert Powers spotted photographs of her taken at a friend's home. With her mother's support, she signed with his agency and began working as a teen model while still in high school, eventually appearing in publications including Seventeen, Life, Harper's Bazaar, and Vogue. In April 1950, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine for a second time, which led producer David O. Selznick to offer her a film contract. She declined and continued modeling while studying dance and acting.

McNamara made her professional stage debut on January 29, 1951, at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, playing Una Brehony in the United States premiere of Michael J. Molloy's comedy The King of Friday's Men, directed by John Burrell. The production had previously run at the Abbey Theatre for the National Theatre of Ireland under Burrell's direction. The play transferred to Broadway's Playhouse Theatre, where McNamara made her Broadway debut on February 21, 1951, though the production closed after just four performances. She next played Alice in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can't Take It with You at the Lenox Hill Playhouse in late March and April 1951.

Shortly after, McNamara joined the national touring production of F. Hugh Herbert's The Moon Is Blue as Patty O'Neill, a role originated on Broadway by Barbara Bel Geddes. The tour began in Detroit on April 20, 1951, under the direction of Otto Preminger, who was simultaneously directing the Broadway production. In June 1952, McNamara left the tour to succeed Bel Geddes in the Broadway production. The following year, Preminger cast her in the film adaptation of the same work, in which she reprised the role of Patty O'Neill. The film generated significant controversy due to its frank sexual dialogue and themes, leading the MPAA to withhold its seal of approval. United Artists released the film regardless, and it was banned in Kansas, Maryland, and Ohio and received a Condemned rating from the National Legion of Decency. Despite this, the film earned $3.5 million at the box office. McNamara's performance brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and a BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer to Film.

Following the success of The Moon Is Blue, McNamara signed with 20th Century Fox and appeared in the 1954 romantic drama Three Coins in the Fountain. The following year she co-starred opposite Richard Burton in the biographical film Prince of Players. After 1955, however, she accepted no screen roles for the remainder of the decade. Her stalled career has been attributed in part to her refusal to relocate to Los Angeles and her reported unwillingness to participate in studio publicity or pose for promotional photographs. Director Otto Preminger, in his 1977 memoir, noted that McNamara experienced significant personal difficulties following her rise to fame, including a nervous breakdown and the dissolution of her marriage to director David Swift, whom she had wed in March 1951. The couple had no children and later divorced; Swift remarried in 1957. McNamara never remarried, and after her divorce she had a relationship with screenwriter Walter Bernstein.

McNamara returned to Broadway in 1962 in the play Step on a Crack. That same year she performed in a production of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn with Darren McGavin at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse in Florida, having previously worked with McGavin in a one-night performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. In 1963, Preminger cast her in a small role in The Cardinal, which proved to be her final film appearance. Also in 1963, she guest starred on an episode of Ben Casey and played the title character in the Season 5 Twilight Zone episode Ring-a-Ding Girl. Her last onscreen appearance came in July 1964 in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled Body in the Barn, opposite Lillian Gish.

After her final screen role, McNamara withdrew from public life and supported herself through temporary work as a typist in New York City. At the time of her death, she had been writing scripts, including one titled The Mighty Dandelion, which had been purchased by a production company. On February 18, 1978, McNamara was found dead in her New York City apartment, having deliberately taken an overdose of sleeping pills and tranquilizers and leaving a suicide note on her piano. She was 49 years old. Police reports noted a history of mental illness, and friends described her as having suffered from severe depression. McNamara is interred at Saint Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.