Bay Street mourns the loss of dear friend and actress Anne Jackson
Bay Street mourns the loss of Anne Jackson, a dear life-long friend and talented actress. We will forever miss her and her equally beloved Eli Wallach who predeceased her. We send all of our love and condolences to Anne’s family.
-Love The Bay Street Theater Family
A distinguished star of the stage who was half of one of America’s best-known acting couples, sharing much of a long and distinguished career with her husband, Eli Wallach, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90.
Anne Jackson together with her beloved husband Eli, played a huge part in Bay Streets history with dear friend Sybil Christopher. In May 2010, Bay Street Theater named the Annie and Eli Second Stage in honor of Anne Jackson and Eli Wallach for their support and commitment to the theater.
Critics hailed her range and the subtlety of her characterizations — including all the women, from a middle-aged matron to a grandmother, in David V. Robison’s “Promenade, All!” (1972) — and a housewife verging on hysteria in Alan Ayckbourn’s “Absent Friends” (1977). She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as the daughter of a manufacturer, played by Edward G. Robinson, in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night” (1956). Ms. Jackson won acclaim early on — in Tennessee Williams’s “Summer and Smoke” (1948) and in Shaw’s “Arms and the Man” (1950). In Edward Chodorov’s comedy “Oh, Men! Oh, Women!” (1953), she delivered a memorable 20-minute monologue from a psychiatrist’s couch. She appeared with Mr. Wallach and Mr. Laughton in Shaw’s “Major Barbara” (1957). Other plays in which they starred included Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” (1959), Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” (1961) and Jean Anouilh’s “The Waltz of the Toreadors” (1973).
But she was best known for her work with Mr. Wallach, who died in 2014. Both starred Off Broadway in Anne Meara’s comedy “Down the Garden Paths,” they captivated audiences with their onstage synergy, displaying the tense affections and sizzling battles of two old pros who knew both how to love and how to fight.
Together they appeared in classics by Shaw and Chekhov; in dramas by Tennessee Williams and Eugène Ionesco; and, perhaps most notably, in offbeat comedies by Murray Schisgal. They both won Obie Awards for their work in Mr. Schisgal’s 1963 Off Broadway double bill, “The Typists” and “The Tiger.” They also starred in his hit 1964 Broadway comedy, “Luv,” directed by Mike Nichols, which ran 901 performances and won three Tony Awards, and in another pair of Schisgal one-acts, “Twice Around the Park,” on Broadway in 1982.
Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach appeared together 13 times on Broadway, seven times Off Broadway, and occasionally in movies and on television, where they did most of their work (both together and apart) in the later years of their careers. In 1978, they appeared together in an Off Broadway revival of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” alongside their two daughters. Roberta Wallach played Anne, and Katherine Wallach played Anne’s sister, Margot.
Both survive their mother, along with her son, Peter; a sister, Beatrice Marz; three grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
Posted: April 15, 2016 in Support
