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Barbara Stuart, TV Actress, Is Dead at 81
By William Grimes
The New York Times
May 19, 2011
Barbara Stuart, an actress with a familiar if not famous face on television for half a century, who appeared on nearly 80 television series that spanned much of the medium’s history, died on Sunday in St. George, Utah. She was 81.
Her death was confirmed by her brother, Richard McNeese.
Starting with “I Led Three Lives” in 1954 and concluding with the Showtime series “Huff” in 2006, Ms. Stuart never achieved stardom. Viewers with sharp eyes and good memories might recall her as Miss Bunny, the long-suffering girlfriend of Sergeant Carter on “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” or as Peggy Ferguson, McLean Stevenson’s wife on “The McLean Stevenson Show,” but her television appearances were notable more for their frequency than their visibility.
After appearing in the recurring role of Bessie, Gildy’s inept secretary, on “The Great Gildersleeve,” in 1955, she found steady employment for the next five decades, compiling a long list of credits that included shows both renowned and long forgotten. She appeared on the classic shows “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show,” “Rawhide,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Taxi.” Less celebrated were “Jefferson Drum,” “Markham” and “Frontier Circus.”
Although she had recurring roles on “Pete and Gladys,” as Gladys’s friend Alice, in the early 1960s, and on “Our Family Honor,” as Marianne Danzig, the wife of a crime lord played by Eli Wallach, in the mid-1980s, she usually worked on just one or two episodes of a series.
She showed up on “Batman” in 1966 as Rocket O’Rourke, henchwoman to the Puzzler, for two parts of a linked episode and then vanished from the series, only to resurface as Goldie Miner on an episode of “T.H.E. Cat.” This was the pattern throughout a career that extended from the kinescope era to cable.
Barbara Ann McNeese was born on Jan. 3, 1930, in Paris, Ill., and grew up in nearby Hume. After graduating from high school, she took acting classes at the Schuster-Martin School of Drama in Cincinnati and then moved to New York, where she studied with Stella Adler and Uta Hagen. To pay for her classes, she modeled on the side. For professional purposes, she took the last name Stuart, a family name.
Her first television role came in 1954, when she played Comrade Martine Fenton in the cold war spy drama “I Led Three Lives.” After being cast in the national touring production of “Lunatics and Lovers,” with Zero Mostel in the starring role, she was hired for “The Great Gildersleeve,” and the television parts came rolling in.
Ms. Stuart, who lived in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, appeared in a handful of films, including “Marines, Let’s Go!” (1961), “Hellfighters” (1968) and “The Pterodactyl Woman From Beverly Hills” (1997). In the 1980 satire “Airplane!,” she was the wife of Rex Kramer, the crack pilot played by Robert Stack. She was Tom Hanks’s future mother-in-law in “Bachelor Party” (1984).
She wound up her television career in a recurring role on “Huff.” From 2004 to 2006, she played Alice, one of Blythe Danner’s bridge partners.
Her marriage to the actor Dick Gautier ended in divorce. In addition to her brother, Richard, of Santa Clara, Utah, she is survived by three stepchildren: Diane Christine Chormicle of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; Denise Michelle Gautier of Arcadia, Calif.; and Rand Robert Gautier of Santa Rosa, Calif.
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