Marge Redmond

Marge Redmond, born Marjorie Redmond on December 14, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio, was an American actress and singer whose career spanned Broadway, television, and film across several decades. She died on February 10, 2020, at the age of 95. Raised in Lakewood, Ohio, by her father J.V. Redmond, a fire chief, and her mother Margaret, she took her first steps toward acting through a high school drama group called the Barnstormers. Before pursuing the profession full time, she held jobs as a bank typist and mail page. Her earliest professional stage work came through musical productions mounted by stock companies in the Cleveland area, and it was at the Cleveland Play House that she developed her craft alongside actor Jack Weston, whom she married in 1950.

Redmond's Broadway career ran from 1955 to 1983 and encompassed a range of productions across multiple genres. She made her presence felt early in the 1955 revue Phoenix '55, which featured Nancy Walker. She went on to understudy Judy Holliday in the musical Bells Are Ringing, a production she and Weston both left abruptly in 1958 when the couple departed for Los Angeles in a vintage Volkswagen, anticipating a short stay that ultimately stretched to eighteen years. Additional Broadway credits include the drama The Corn Is Green, Neil Simon's play California Suite, and the drama The Dresser, Ronald Harwood's 1981 production starring Tom Courtenay, in which Redmond appeared in a supporting role. She also understudied Angela Lansbury in the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. In 1999, she appeared Off-Broadway in Joan Vail Thorne's comedy The Exact Center of the Universe, a performance the Village Voice described by noting her presence among the cast's "old pros" and calling her work "solid and funny."

On television, Redmond became widely recognized for playing Sister Jacqueline in the ABC series The Flying Nun, which ran from 1967 to 1970. Her performance earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for the 1967–68 season. She accumulated an extensive list of guest appearances spanning more than three decades, from Ben Casey in 1962 through Law & Order in 1997, with individual appearances on programs including Perry Mason, The Donna Reed Show, The Munsters, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, The Cosby Show, Murphy Brown, Married with Children, The Twilight Zone, The Practice, and others. She held a recurring role as Mrs. McCardle on Matlock. During the 1970s she was also widely seen in a series of television commercials for Cool Whip, in which she portrayed an innkeeper named Sarah Tucker.

Her film work included The Trouble with Angels in 1966, Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie that same year, Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot in 1976, and Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993. Redmond and Weston later divorced, and she never remarried. Her death in February 2020 was not publicly announced until May of that year.