Phyllis Thaxter

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Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter (born November 20, 1919 in Portland , Maine , † August 14, 2012 in Longwood , Florida ) was an American film and stage actress .

Life

Phyllis Thaxter grew up as the daughter of Sidney St. Felix Thaxter, a Supreme Court judge of Maine, and his wife Marie Phyllis (Schuyler) Thaxter, a stage actress, in Portland. She has two sisters and one brother. Her schooling she enjoyed among others at the St. Genevieve School in Canadian Montreal and the Deering High School in her hometown of Portland. After gaining first experience as an actress in various theater groups during the summer holidays, she moved to New York City at the age of 18 . Here she stood on stage from April 1940 at the side of Montgomery Clift and Lynn Fontanne in the play There Shall Be No Night on Broadway .

Thaxter made her debut as a film actress in 1944 as an actress in the war film Thirty Seconds About Tokyo . At the beginning of her career she was mostly in front of the camera in movies, but at the beginning of the 1950s she turned her attention to television. She stood in front of the camera in 1959 in Wagon Train , 1969 in Bonanza or 1973 in Love Story .

Thaxter, who was briefly in a relationship with her former stage colleague Montgomery Clift, married the film producer James T. Aubrey on November 11, 1944 . In December 1945 their daughter Schuyler Susan Aubrey was born, who later also worked as an actress. Their second child, son James Aubrey Jr., was born in January 1953. In 1962, Phyllis Thaxter and James T. Aubrey divorced. In December of the same year she went to the altar with publisher Gilbert Lea, with whom she was married until his death in May 2008.

Through the short-lived marriage of her daughter to the Mexican film producer Ilya Salkind , Thaxter was offered her most famous role. Phyllis Thaxter played Martha Kent , the superhero's adoptive mother, in the 1978 comic book adaptation of Superman , which Salkind was executive producer . It was also one of her last roles. After a guest appearance on the television series Murder is Her Hobby (1992), Phyllis Thaxter withdrew into private life.

Most recently Thaxter lived in seclusion in Vero Beach in Indian River County , Florida . She died of Alzheimer's disease in August 2012 at the age of 92 .

Filmography (selection)

Award

Web links

Commons : Phyllis Thaxter  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Actress Phyllis Thaxter, Superman's Mom, Dies at 90
  2. ↑ 'Superman' actress Phyllis Thaxter dies at 92  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miamiherald.com  
personal data
SURNAME Thaxter, Phyllis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES St. Felix Thaxter, Phyllis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland , Maine , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 2012
Place of death Longwood , Florida , United States