Actress Barbara Bel Geddes Passes Dallas' 'Miss Ellie' was 82

Barbara Bel Geddes

Northeast Harbor, MN – Barbara Bel Geddes, a renowned theater, film and television actress known for her work with Alfred Hitchcock and for the role of Miss Ellie, matriarch of the Ewing family on the long-running television drama Dallas, died from complications of lung cancer on Monday at her home in Northeast Harbor, Me. She was 82.

Bel Geddes, The daughter of architect and stage designer Norman Bel Geddes, was born October 31, 1922, in New York City, and grew up around the theater. She began acting at a young age, and made her Broadway debut in the 1941 production Out of the Frying Pan.

Five years later Bel Geddes earned a Theater World Award for Deep Are the Roots, directed by Elia Kazan. Her most celebrated theater performance was that of Maggie the Cat in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ classic play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for which she earned a Tony nomination. She was nominated for another Tony in 1961, for the play Mary, Mary.

She made her first film in 1947, starring opposite Henry Fonda in The Long Night. The following year she was nominated for an Oscar in an adaptation of the play I Remember Mama. Other films included the Blood on the Moon, Fourteen Hours and The Five Pennies.

Her best-known film was the classic 1958 release Vertigo, a disturbing drama of romantic obsession directed by Alfred Hitchcock, in which she co-starred as Midge, a San Francisco resident who watches her ex-fiancé, played by James Stewart, develop a dangerous fixation on a mysterious woman played by Kim Novak. Bel Geddes worked with Hitchcock on television as well, appearing in several episodes of the weekly anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Her most enduring TV character, Eleanor “Miss Ellie” Ewing, began in 1978 with the debut of Dallas. In 1980, the role earned Bel Geddes an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She was nominated on two other occasions.

In 1984, Bel Geddes temporarily left Dallas after experiencing a heart attack, and was replaced by Donna Reed. When she rejoined the show after her recuperation, Reed sued unsuccessfully in an effort to keep the role. Bel Geddes remained with Dallas for the remainder of its run.

In addition to acting, Bel Geddes wrote and illustrated the children's books I Like to Be Me and So Do I.

Bel Geddes was married twice. Her 1944 marriage to engineer Carl Schreuer ended in divorce in 1951. That same year she wed theater director Windsor Lewis, with whom she remained until his death in 1972. She is survived by two daughters: Susan, from her first marriage, and Betsy, from her second.