Nancy Walker: Difference between revisions

Nancy Walker (May 10, 1922 – March 25, 1992) was an American actress. She was sometimes mistaken for being Jewish (likely due to her having played one of the most famous "Jewish mothers" in film or television history), but she was not Jewish. She would tell people she was "Black Irish".

Married twice, she had a daughter Miranda with musical theatre teacher David Craig (who WAS Jewish), who taught "singers to act and actors to sing". Miranda grew up to become an advertising copywriter.

Both Craig and their daughter are now deceased.

Born Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1922 (although some sources have cited 1921 as her year of birth), she held a life-long feeling of abandonment by her mother, who ed while she was an infant. She and her sister, Betty Lou Barto, grew up in large cities where their father, who was a performer, entertained in vaudeville. Walker made her Broadway debut in 1941 in Best Foot Forward. The role would also provide Walker with her film debut when a movie version, starring Lucille Ball, was filmed in 1943. A subsequent appearance was in the MGM musical, Broadway Rhythm in which she had a featured musical number, "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet." This song was written especially for her by Leonard Bernstein.

A diminutive 4 feet10 inches (1.50 m) tall, Walker was difficult to cast; however, thanks to her dry comic delivery, she continued acting throughout the 1940s and 1950s and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1955. Dozens of television guest appearances and recurring roles followed that would provide her with steady work. Her work spanned five decades, including comedies, dramas, and variety shows. Nancy co-starred with Phil Silvers in the 1960 musical, Do Re Mi.

She achieved her greatest success playing Ida Morgenstern, the mother of Valerie Harper's Rhoda Morgenstern, initially in a number of guest appearances on Mary Tyler Moore and then as a regular in its spinoff, Rhoda. During much of the time she was costarring in that hit situation comedy, she was also a regular on the successful Rock Hudson detective series McMillan and Wife, portraying Mildred the maid. These two roles would bring her seven Emmy Award nominations. She also starrred in two short-lived situation comedies, Blansky's Beauties (an arms-length spin-off of Happy Days), and The Nancy Walker Show, both during the 1976-1977 season, giving her the rare distinction of being in two failed series within the same year. She returned to Rhoda (from which she'd departed a year earlier) at the beginning of the 1977-1978 season, remaining with the show for the rest of its run. During this time, Walker had begun to direct episodic television, including episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, and the hit situation comedy Alice.

One of Walker's last major film roles was as a master criminal posing as the deaf-mute maid Yetta in the 1976 all-star comedy spoof Murder by Death.

Her later years brought her diminished success. Walker continued to be a regular presence on television, however, playing "Rosie", a New Jersey diner waitress in a series of commercials for Bounty paper towels from 1970 to 1990. She helped make the product's slogan, "The Quicker Picker Upper", a common catchphrase.

In 1980, Walker made her feature film directorial debut, directing disco group The Village People and olympian Bruce Jenner in the pseudo-autobiographical musical Can't Stop the Music. The film was a critical and box office failure, although it later became something of a camp/cult favorite.

In the early 1980s, Walker directed for the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Florida, and acted in "Gin Game" in a theatre in Denver.

She continued to appear in television guest roles and earned one final Emmy Award nomination in 1987 for a recurring role (as regular Estelle Getty's estranged sister, "Aunt Angela") on NBC's hit TV series The Golden Girls.

Walker was a reformed smoker, but she died from lung cancer at the age of 69 in Studio City, California. At the time of her death, she was co-starring in the situation comedy True Colors (about an interracial blended family), playing the grandmother. Her ashes were scattered in the Virgin Islands.

Bushes from her rose garden, retained by daughter Miranda, were willed by Miranda to actress Doris Roberts (of "Everybody Loves Raymond"), a longtime friend, and now thrive in Roberts' garden.

• Nancy Walker at IMDb
• http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/w/Nancy%20Walker/nancy_walker.htm
• RhodaOnline.com