Lois Maureen Stapleton (June 21, 1925 – March 13, 2006) was an American Academy Award-winning actress in film, theater and television. She also won an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards and was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Stapleton was born in Troy, New York, the daughter of Irene (née Walsh) and John P. Stapleton, and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family. Her father was an alcoholic and her parents separated during her childhood. She had a brother, Jack. Stapleton began acting in theater after finishing high school and rapidly gained respect as both a dramatic and comedic actress.
Stapleton moved to New York City at the age of eighteen, and did modeling to pay the bills. She once said that it was her infatuation with the handsome Hollywood actor Joel McCrea which led her into acting. She made her Broadway debut in Burgess Meredith's production of The Playboy of the Western World in 1946. Stepping in because Anna Magnani refused the role due to her limited English, Stapleton won a Tony Award for her role in Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo in 1951. (Magnani's English improved, however, and she was able to play the role in the film version, winning an Oscar.) Stapleton played in other Williams' productions, including Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton and Orpheus Descending (and its film adaptation, The Fugitive Kind), as well as Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. She won a second Tony Award for Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady, which was written especially for her, in 1971.
Stapleton's film career, though limited, brought her immediate success, with her debut in Lonelyhearts (1958) earning a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in the 1963 film version of Bye Bye Birdie, in the role of Mama Mae Peterson, with Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh, Paul Lynde and Ann-Margret. She was nominated again for an Oscar for Airport (1970) and Woody Allen's Interiors (1978). She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Reds (1981), directed by Warren Beatty, in which she portrayed the Lithuanian-born anarchist, Emma Goldman. She ended her acceptance speech with the quip "I would like to thank everyone I've ever met."
Stapleton won a 1968 Emmy Award for her performance in Among the Paths of Eden. She was nominated for the television version of All the King's Men (1959), Queen of the Stardust Ballroom (1975), and The Gathering (1977). Her more recent appearances included Johnny Dangerously (1984), Cocoon (1985) and its sequel Cocoon: The Return (1988).
Stapleton's first husband was Max Allentuck, general manager to the producer Kermit Bloomgarden, and her second, playwright David Rayfiel, from whom she divorced. She had a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Katherine, by her first husband. Her daughter, Katherine Allentuck, garnered good reviews for her single movie role, that of "Aggie" in Summer of '42 (Stapleton herself also had a minor, uncredited role in the film as the protagonist's mother).
Stapelton suffered from anxiety and alcoholism for many years and once told an interviewer, "The curtain came down and I went into the vodka." She also said that her unhappy childhood contributed to her insecurities. In 2006, Maureen Stapleton, who was a heavy smoker, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at her home in Lenox, Massachusetts, at the age of 80.
In 1981 Hudson Valley Community College in Stapleton's childhood city of Troy, New York dedicated a theater in her name.
