Barbara Loden
| Barbara Loden | |
|---|---|
Barbara Loden in 1958.
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| Born |
July 8, 1932 Marion, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | September 5, 1980 (aged 48) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Breast cancer |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1950s–1980 |
| Spouse(s) | Laurence Joachim (divorced) Elia Kazan (1968-1980; her death) |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Tony award for Best Featured Actress in a Play 1964 After the Fall |
Barbara Loden (July 8, 1932 – September 5, 1980) was a Broadway Tony award-winning American stage and film actress, model, and stage/film director. She was the first woman to write, direct and star in her own feature film, Wanda, which won the International Critics Award at the 1970 Venice Film Festival. Loden also directed several off-Broadway plays.
Loden was a life member of the famed Actors Studio and appeared in several projects directed by her second husband, Elia Kazan, including Splendor in the Grass. Loden appeared as a regular sidekick on the irreverent The Ernie Kovacs Television Show, where she would get pies thrown in her face or pretend to be "sawed in half".
Loden made her New York theater debut in 1957 in Compulsion and also appeared on stage in The Highest Tree with Robert Redford as well as Night Circus with Ben Gazzara.
She made her television debut on The Ernie Kovacs Show as a "scantily clad" sidekick to Kovacs, a job that her first husband, television producer and film distributor Larry Joachim, had helped her to attain. According to Loden, she owed a lot to Ernie Kovacs, as another producer on the show had initially vetoed Kovacs' decision to hire her. In interviews, Loden said he had "felt sorry" for her and said, "You can be on the show anyway." He gave her the job of stunt sidekick, rolling around in a rug or getting hit in the face with a pie.
In 1960, Loden appeared in Elia Kazan's film Wild River as Montgomery Clift’s secretary. She was perhaps better known for her role in Splendor in the Grass (1961), in which she played Warren Beatty's sister. She famously portrayed “Maggie”, a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe in Kazan's Lincoln Center Repertory Company stage production of After the Fall (1964), which was written by Monroe's former husband, playwright Arthur Miller. Loden received a Tony award for best actress for her performance in After the Fall, as well as an annual award of the Outer Circle, an organization of writers who covered Broadway for national magazines.After the Fall reviews touted that Loden was the "new Jean Harlow" and a "blonde bombshell". She married director Kazan, her second husband, in 1968.
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