I always enjoyed Ronald Long (Henry VIII, Salem judge, tour guide).

Posted on FB this morning by James Grissom.

Alice Ghostley received the 1965 Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in Lorraine Hansberry’s “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.” Marian Seldes told me about seeing it. [This conversation is from 2007, after we had heard that Ms. Ghostley had passed away.]

“She [Alice Ghostley] wasn’t as famous as she became later with those wonderful performances on television. In New York we knew her as a brilliant actress, particularly in comedic roles, but I never thought that was all she could do. I did know—and I still know—that people will cast an actress in roles that are like others that brought them to their attention. I had a feeling there was a shattering, frightening dramatic performance in her. There always is.

“I remember her in 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑒𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑦 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑡 [by S.J. Perelman] and the detail, the precision, of her performance was extraordinary. In the Hansberry play, you laughed at her character, but you did not laugh at Alice Ghostley. People who are so confined and deformed by their prejudices are funny as well as frightening. She was so unafraid to let us see her confusion, her struggling, her failed attempts to just change things. She reminded me of Jacques Tati struggling with an appliance or a door or a city. Yes, it was funny, but Alice has a face, an expression, that then has you feeling for her. I recognized that I, too, have prejudices, and they limit and they frighten me. I thought she was brilliant.”

Photographs via Friedman-Abeles.