Mary Tarcai

Mary Tarcai (July 6, 1906 – September 22, 1979) was an actress and acting teacher whose Broadway appearances came during the late 1930s. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she emigrated to the United States as a child with her family and was raised in Cleveland, Ohio.

Tarcai launched her acting career at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where her training was rooted in the Stanislavski method. Early in her career she worked with Isaac Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya. Her Broadway credits include Panic and Sunup to Sundown, with her stage work spanning 1935 to 1938.

Following her time at the Neighborhood Playhouse, Tarcai relocated to Atlantic City, where she founded her own theater and produced her own productions. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles, spending seven years working with the Actors' Lab and serving as an assistant to numerous film directors.

Tarcai returned to New York in 1955 and shifted her focus to teaching acting, both privately and at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where she had begun her own career. She was among the first acting teachers to develop classes centered on cold readings. Her students included Shirley MacLaine, Florence Henderson, Charlotte Rae, Edmond O'Brien, Valerie Harper, Raymond Burr, Julie Newmar, Ralph Waite, Lilia Skala, and Ann B. Davis.

She was married to Arthur H. Singer, a writer and story editor on the third season of the original Star Trek television series, until his death in 1978. Tarcai died on September 22, 1979, in New York City.