Mildred Dunnock

Mildred Dorothy Dunnock (January 25, 1901 – July 5, 1991) was an American stage and screen actress born in Baltimore, Maryland, whose Broadway career spanned from 1932 to 1977. She earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress and received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1971.

Dunnock's early education took place at Western High School in Baltimore, after which she attended Goucher College, where she participated in the Agora dramatic society and joined Alpha Phi sorority. Following graduation, she taught English at the Friends School of Baltimore while also contributing to theatrical productions there. She later earned a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University while teaching school in New York, and she trained at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg, Robert Lewis, and Elia Kazan. In 1947, she became a founding member of the Actors Studio.

Her Broadway career began with Life Begins in 1932 and continued with The Hill Between in 1938. In 1940, she drew significant attention for her portrayal of a Welsh schoolteacher in The Corn is Green, a role she performed while simultaneously working full-time as a teacher at the Brearley School. The 1945 film adaptation of that production marked her screen debut. Throughout the 1940s, Dunnock concentrated primarily on stage work, appearing in Another Part of the Forest and Lute Song in 1946, and originating the role of Linda Loman in the Broadway production of Death of a Salesman in 1949. She also originated the role of Big Mama in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, though the film version cast Judith Anderson in the part. Additional Broadway credits include Tartuffe, Traveller Without Luggage, A Place Without Doors, Des Journées Entières Dans les Arbres, and The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. She also performed in regional productions at the Long Wharf Theatre and the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Dunnock reprised the role of Linda Loman in the 1951 film version of Death of a Salesman, earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her second nomination in the same category came for Baby Doll in 1956. She also received Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Viva Zapata! in 1952, Baby Doll, and Peyton Place in 1957. Among her other film appearances were The Trouble with Harry (1955), Love Me Tender (1956), Peyton Place (1957), The Nun's Story (1959), Butterfield 8 (1960), Something Wild (1961), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). In Kiss of Death (1947), she played the woman in a wheelchair killed by Richard Widmark's character Tommy Udo. Her final film was The Pick-up Artist (1987), starring Robert Downey Jr. and Molly Ringwald.

In 1960, Dunnock appeared in The Crystal Heart at the East 74th Street Theater alongside Virginia Vestoff in Vestoff's first professional appearance. In 1966, she played Linda Loman for a third time in a television film adaptation of Death of a Salesman, reuniting with her original Broadway co-star Lee J. Cobb. That performance earned her an Emmy Award nomination in 1967 for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama. She also made guest appearances on television series including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Ponds Theater, as well as several television movies later in her career.

Dunnock was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1983 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6613 Hollywood Boulevard. In her personal life, she married Keith Urmy, a Chemical Bank executive in Manhattan, in 1933; the couple had one child and remained married until her death. Dunnock died from natural causes on July 5, 1991, at age 90, in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, while residing in the nearby town of West Tisbury.