The Return of the Classic Films Obituary Thread

[CBHagman]

31. Actress Sally Kellerman, 84

I'd seen her in A Little Romance and of course in M*A*S*H, but there was a lot I didn't know about her.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/feb/27/sally-kellerman-obituary

Kellerman was born in Long Beach, California, to John Helm Kellerman, an oil executive, and Edith, a piano teacher. She was educated at Hollywood high school, where her talent for singing and acting first emerged. At 18, she was offered a contract as a singer with the jazz label Verve Records. She later claimed that stage fright put paid to her hopes of performing, but also that she declined the contract in favour of pursuing her acting career, having recently begun taking classes alongside Jack Nicholson.

It was not until 1972 that she recorded her first album, Roll with the Feelin’. Her second, Sally, was released in 2009.

While working as a waitress, she began to get small parts in film, television and theatre. She had one line of dialogue in Reform School Girl (1957), her screen debut, as well as in the horror movie Hands of a Stranger (1962). She appeared in television series including The Outer Limits, in which a part was specially written for her by Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of Psycho (1960), who had seen her in a play. She wore silver contact lenses as a psychiatrist who develops godlike powers in a 1966 episode of Star Trek. In The Boston Strangler (1968), she narrowly escapes being murdered by the title character, played by Tony Curtis.

Bio, credits, and more:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001419/