Vivian Nathan

Vivian Nathan, born Vivian Firko on October 26, 1916, in Manhattan, was an American actress and a founding member of the Actors Studio. She appeared on Broadway from 1948 through 1977 and maintained an active presence in film and television across several decades. Nathan died on April 3, 2015, at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of 98.

Nathan grew up in Maspeth, Queens, where her family relocated shortly after her birth to Hipolit and Anna Firko. She attended Holy Cross Parochial School in Maspeth before later enrolling at the St. Nicholas school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In 1944, theater producer John Golden noticed her during auditions for aspiring stage actors. She made her Broadway debut in 1948, still performing under the name Firko, in the Actors Studio production of Bessie Breuer's Sundown Beach, directed by Elia Kazan. By the time the 1949 production of Montserrat — Lillian Hellman's adaptation of the Emmanuel Roblès play — opened, she had adopted the stage name Nathan, taken from her husband Nathan Schwalb's given name.

Nathan had become an original member of the Actors Studio when Kazan and Lee Strasberg founded it in 1947. Beyond performing, she worked at the Studio as an acting instructor and session moderator, counting actress Kim Stanley among her students. She served on the Actors Studio's board of directors until 1999, alongside Ellen Burstyn, Lee Grant, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Estelle Parsons.

Her Broadway career included several notable original productions. In 1951, she was cast in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo alongside Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach, and Martin Balsam. She reunited with Balsam two years later in the 1953 Kazan-directed production of Camino Real. Nathan received a Clarence Derwent Award in 1955 for her portrayal of the Charwoman in Anastasia, directed by Alan Schneider. In 1966, she appeared in The Investigation, in which she portrayed a Holocaust survivor. Her final Broadway credit came in 1977, when she co-starred opposite Anne Bancroft in Golda, directed by Arthur Penn. Additional Broadway credits include The Watering Place, Semi-Detached, and The Lovers.

Nathan's film career began with the 1958 romantic comedy Teacher's Pet, starring Clark Gable. She subsequently appeared in The Young Savages and The Outsider, in which she played the mother of Tony Curtis' character. Her most prominent film role came in the 1971 crime thriller Klute, in which she played the psychiatrist of Jane Fonda's character.

Her television work included an appearance in the Studio One episode "The Last Summer," two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and three episodes of Playhouse 90: "The Violent Heart" and "Word From a Sealed-Off Box," both in 1958, and "Journey to the Day" in 1960. She also appeared in a 1967 color telecast of The Investigation.

Nathan had been married to Nathan Schwalb for more than 50 years before his death in 2000. Her memorial service was held on April 12, 2015, at Riverside Memorial Chapel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.