Mary Sinclair
| Mary Sinclair | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Ella Dolores Cook November 15, 1922 San Diego, California, U.S. |
| Died | November 5, 2000 (aged 77) Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. |
| Residence | New York City, Los Angeles, California, Phoenix, Arizona |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Occupation | Television, film and stage actress; painter; and, as a young woman, a Conover model |
| Years active | 1949-1987 |
| Known for | first dramatic actress to be given a long-term television acting contract |
| Notable work | the approximately seventy roles she created for television, film and the stage |
| Spouse(s) | George Abbott (1946-1951) (divorced) (2 sons) |
| Relatives | Candice Bergen (god-daughter) |
| Awards | 1951 (Primetime) Emmy nominee |
Mary Sinclair (November 15, 1922 – November 5, 2000) was an American television, film and stage actress and “a familiar face to television viewers in the 1950s” as a performer in numerous plays produced and broadcast live during the early days of television. Sinclair was also a painter and had in her youth been a Conover model. Her husband, for a time, was Broadway producer and director, George Abbott. Boo
Sinclair was born Ella Delores Cook and raised in San Diego, California. As a young woman she began modeling in Los Angeles, and in 1944, she left Hollywood for Manhattan, where she modeled for the Conover agency and acted in summer stock. "I was the arty type," she recalled in a 1951 interview with The New York Times. "I wanted to go to New York and be a real actress.”
In New York City, she became friends with theater producer Hal Prince and theater producer, playwright and director George Abbott, her senior by thirty-five years, whom she married in April 1946 and divorced in 1951. And in the 1940s, she began to acquire experience as a freelance television actress, appearing on 36 programs in two years. But it was CBS board chairman William S. Paley who singled Sinclair out, in 1951, by giving her a seven-year contract with CBS, one of the first acting contracts granted by the network.The New York Times reported that she was the first dramatic actress "to enter video's incubator for hatching its own stars."
" Ms. Sinclair usually played sweet, goody-goody characters on television. But not long after signing with CBS, she played quite different parts on three successive evenings: a vicious singer, a spiteful flapper and a libidinous shrew." "She was dazed by the number of men she had to kiss on-screen and said, 'I average two strangers a week.'"
Sinclair starred in the live drama programs popular in the 1950s such as Playhouse 90, Westinghouse Studio One, and The U.S. Steel Hour. She had guest roles on early series including The Untouchables, Peter Gunn, and Woman with a Past. And she starred in productions of Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter and Little Women; also on the Sherlock Holmes television series with British actor, Ronald Howard.
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