Rosemary Murphy

Rosemary Murphy was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television. Born in Munich, Germany, she trained at Catholic University, the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio with Sanford Meisner. Her first stage role came in Germany in 1949, in Peer Gynt. Her Broadway debut followed in 1950 with The Tower Beyond Tragedy, and she appeared in roughly fifteen Broadway productions, the last being Waiting in the Wings (1999). On screen she played Maudie Atkinson in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Callie Hacker in Walking Tall (1973). For television, she portrayed Sara Delano Roosevelt in Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977), winning an Emmy for the first. She worked on The Secret Storm, All My Children, Another World, and As the World Turns, and appeared in Columbo (1974) and Murder, She Wrote (1987). Her honors included three Tony nominations, plus an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Clarence Derwent Award.