Margaret Draper

Margaret Ruth Draper (November 20, 1916 – October 14, 2011) was an American actress and international service worker whose Broadway career spanned from 1925 to 1967. Born in Spanish Fork, Utah, she was the third of six children of Delbert Morley Draper and Frances Mary Rogers. Shortly after her birth, the family relocated to Salt Lake City, where she lived until 1934.

Draper studied at the University of Utah, where a 1940 newspaper article noted her performances in Theta Alpha Phi productions. Following her graduation, she traveled to New York City with a friend and his sister to pursue a theatrical career, arriving with a single bag and $38.50. She secured a small room in Tudor City and took a job at G. Schirmer's music store while establishing herself in the profession.

Between the late 1930s and 1940, Draper spent four seasons working in theater across the Eastern United States. Her regional credits included the Wharf School of the Theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts; the Green Lake Players in Buffalo, New York; the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City; and the Chekhov Theater Studio in Ridgefield, Connecticut. During World War II, she served for two years with the Red Cross as a recreational director in Europe and the Middle East.

After returning to New York, Draper joined the Barter Theatre in 1947 and toured with that company throughout the Southwest for a year before returning to the city in March 1948 to pursue radio work. She obtained her first radio role with Carl Beier on the CBS program Joe Powers of Oakville. She subsequently appeared in an Actor's Equity production of Peer Gynt and was voted one of the most promising actresses of the year. She went on to play Fay Perkins in the radio soap opera Ma Perkins and in 1949 won the role of Liz Dennis on Brighter Day, a part she held until around 1954. She then won the role of Linda Pepper on Pepper Young's Family.

On Broadway, Draper portrayed Eva Petri in The Gambler in 1952. Her additional Broadway credits included The Love Song, A Minor Adjustment during the 1967–1968 season, and the play For Heaven's Sake, Mother!. She also appeared in a Nescafé instant coffee commercial.

In 2003, Draper moved to an independent living community in Salt Lake City. In the fall of 2010, she relocated to her son's home in Payson, Utah, and the following spring moved to a care facility in that town, where she died on October 14, 2011, at the age of 94.