Sarah Lucie Cunningham (September 8, 1918 – March 24, 1986) was an American film, stage and television
actress
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...
.
Personal life
Sarah Lucie Cunningham was born in
Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville (; locally ) is a city in and the seat of Greenville County, South Carolina, United States. With a population of 70,720 at the 2020 census, it is the sixth-largest city in the state. Greenville is located approximately halfway be ...
. She was married to actor John Randolph from January 3, 1942, until her death on March 24, 1986. The couple had two children.
Career
Cunningham met her future husband, John Randolph, at
Stella Adler
Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress and acting teacher. ''
Native Son
''Native Son'' (1940) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.
While not apologizing ...
'', directed and produced by
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
.
Blacklist
Cunningham and her husband were believed to have first been named as having possible Communist ties in 1951, possibly again in 1953, and were called before the
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
in 1955 in New York. They, as well as
Madeline Lee Gilford
Madeline Lee Gilford (born Madeline Lederman; May 30, 1923 – April 15, 2008) was an American film and stage actress and social activist, who later enjoyed a career as a theatrical producer. Gilford was married, secondly, to actor Jack Gilford ...
,
Jack Gilford
Jack Gilford (born Jacob Aaron Gellman; July 25, 1908 – June 4, 1990) was an American Broadway, film, and television actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for ''Save the Tiger'' (1973).
Early life
Gilfor ...
and others, were victims of the anti-Communist
blacklist
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...
. Neither was able to work in film, TV or radio until well into the 1960s.
Cunningham was hired in 1964 to play Elizabeth 'Aunt Liz' Matthews on the newly created soap opera '' Another World''. She, along with actor John Beal, was fired after just one episode by creator
Irna Phillips
Irna Phillips (July 1, 1901 – December 23, 1973) was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent and actress. She is best remembered for pioneering a format of the daytime soap opera in the United States geared specifically toward wo ...
for no apparent reason. It was assumed to be caused by an advertiser or network pressure to fire anyone who had been or was on the "blacklist". The couple supported themselves and their family by working in the theater until they both were finally able to find work on TV and in films.
Ensemble Studio Theatre
Randolph and Cunningham were original founding members of the
Ensemble Studio Theatre
The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) is a non-profit membership-based developmental theatre located in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. It has a dual mission of nurturing individual theatre artists and developing new American plays.
Overview
The En ...
in New York City, together with Artistic Director Curt Dempster and actor
Jon Voight
Jonathan Vincent Voight (; born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. He came to prominence in the late 1960s with his Academy Award–nominated performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in ''Midnight Cowboy'' (1969). During the 1970s, he ...
, between 1968 and 1972. They subsequently founded the Ensemble Studio Theater West in Los Angeles in 1980. Both branches have become well known for the quality of their productions and their programs for developing playwrights.
Later work
Although both worked extensively in television and film, their primary love was for the living theater. In 1983 they introduced playwright James G. Richardson's one-act play ''Eulogy'', directed by Heidie Helen Davis. It was a two-character play written especially for them as part of a trilogy of two-character one-acts. They performed it in both New York and Los Angeles and it was the last work they performed together on stage before she died. However, their very last work together was in the ''
Trapper John, M.D.
''Trapper John, M.D.'' is an American medical drama television series and spin-off of the film ''M*A*S*H'' (1970). Pernell Roberts portrayed the title character, a lovable surgeon who became a mentor and father figure in San Francisco, Californ ...
'' episode "The Curmudgeon", shown on March 18, 1986, a week before she died. In it, she and Randolph play reunited lovers who finally marry.
Death
On March 24, 1986 while attending the Oscar telecast ceremony in Los Angeles, Miss Cunningham suffered a heart attack and died. Cunningham had suffered from emphysema for many years and had asthma as well since childhood. She had been in the hospital for her yearly emphysema treatment but had interrupted the treatment to attend the Academy Awards for the first time.
Frances
Frances is a French and English given name of Latin origin. In Latin the meaning of the name Frances is 'from France' or 'free one.' The male version of the name in English is Francis. The original Franciscus, meaning "Frenchman", comes from the ...
The Cowboys
''The Cowboys'' is a 1972 American Western film starring John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Bruce Dern, and featuring Colleen Dewhurst and Slim Pickens. It was the feature film debut of Robert Carradine. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name ...
'' (1972)
* ''
Black Like Me
''Black Like Me'', first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under racial segregation. Griffin was a nat ...
'' (1964)
* ''
The Naked City
''The Naked City'' (aka ''Naked City'') is a 1948 American film noir directed by Jules Dassin, starring Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart and Don Taylor. The film, shot almost entirely on location in New York City, depicts the polic ...
'' (1948)
Television
* ''
Trapper John, M.D.
''Trapper John, M.D.'' is an American medical drama television series and spin-off of the film ''M*A*S*H'' (1970). Pernell Roberts portrayed the title character, a lovable surgeon who became a mentor and father figure in San Francisco, Californ ...
'' (1981-1986)
* ''
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
Vega$
''Vegas'' (stylized as ''Vega$'') is an American crime drama television series that aired on ABC from September 20, 1978, to June 3, 1981, with the pilot episode airing April 25, 1978. ''Vegas'' was produced by Aaron Spelling and created by Mich ...
Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (3 November 39 AD – 30 April 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial ...
Nero Wolfe
Nero Wolfe is a brilliant, obese and eccentric fictional armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in Ne ...
'' (1977)
* '' Police Woman'' (1976)
* ''Executive Suite '' (1976)
* ''Visions'' (1976)
* ''F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood'' (1976)
* ''
Starsky and Hutch
''Starsky & Hutch'' is an American action television series, which consisted of a 72-minute pilot movie (originally aired as a ''Movie of the Week'' entry) and 92 episodes of 50 minutes each. The show was created by William Blinn (inspired by th ...
'' (1975)
* ''
The Rookies
''The Rookies'' is an American police procedural series that aired on ABC from 1972 until 1976. It follows the exploits of three rookie police officers working in an unidentified city for the fictitious Southern California Police Department (SC ...
'' (1975)
* ''The Turning Point of Jim Malloy'' (1975)
* ''
Baretta
''Baretta'' is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978.
The show was a revised and milder version of a 1973–1974 ABC series, '' Toma'', starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police ...
'' (1975)
* ''The Family Kovack'' (1974)
* ''House of Evil'' (1974)
* ''
The Rimers of Eldritch
''The Rimers of Eldritch'' is a play by Lanford Wilson. The play is set in the mid-20th century in Eldritch, Missouri, a decaying Bible Belt town that once was a prosperous coal mining community. The plot focuses on the murder of the aging local ...
'' (1974)
* ''Screaming Skull'' (1973)
* ''
The Edge of Night
''The Edge of Night'' is an American television mystery crime drama series and soap opera, created by Irving Vendig and produced by Procter & Gamble Productions.
It debuted on CBS on April 2, 1956, and ran as a live broadcast on that networ ...
'' (1956)
* '' Another World'' (1964)
* ''Look Up and Live'' (1954)
* ''Nash Airflyte Theatre'' (1951)
Theater
* ''
My Sweet Charlie
''My Sweet Charlie'' is a 1970 American made-for-television drama film directed by Lamont Johnson. The teleplay by Richard Levinson and William Link is based on the novel of the same name by David Westheimer. Produced by Universal Television and br ...
'' (Original, Play) (1966)
* '' The Zulu and the Zayda'' (Original, Musical, Comedy) (1965)
* '' Toys in the Attic'' (Original, Play, Drama) (understudy) (1960)
* '' The Visit'' (Original, Play, Drama) (1958)
* ''Fair Game'' (Original, Play, Comedy) (1957)
* ''
The House of Bernarda Alba
''The House of Bernarda Alba'' ( es, La casa de Bernarda Alba) is a play by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. Commentators have often grouped it with ''Blood Wedding'' and ''Yerma'' as a "rural trilogy". Garcia Lorca did not include ...
Internet Off-Broadway Database
The Internet Off-Broadway Database (IOBDB), also formerly known as the Lortel Archives, is an online database that catalogues theatre productions shown off-Broadway.
The IOBDB was funded and developed by the non-profit Lucille Lortel Foundation ...