Los Angeles: Golden
Globe nominated actor Rita Gam, who made her eye-catching Hollywood debut
without saying a word and played a real-life bridesmaid at the fairy-tale
wedding of her former roommate Grace Kelly, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles due
to a respiratory failure. She was 88.
Born in Pittsburgh on
April 2, 1927, Rita made her Broadway debut in 1946 with A Flag Is Born and A
Temporary Island, before she broke out as a Hollywood starlet in the early
1950s. She went on to notch memorable roles in The Thief, Saadia, Night
People, Mohawk, 1959's Hannibal, King of
Kings, Klute, among others.
She also appeared on a
number of TV shows such as The Jackie Gleason Show, The
Rockford Files, and Mannix. Her string of early successes led to
a Golden Globe nomination in 1953 for Thief.
She and her co-star Viveca Lindfors
shared the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 1962 Berlin International Film
Festival for their roles as the women in the hotel room in Tad
Danielewski's No Exit, based on the play by Jean-Paul Sartre. Her
last film appearance came in 1989 with the thriller-horror film Midnight.
Rita was also a leading
member of the Minnesota Theater Company during the opening season (1963) of the
Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis with Zoe Caldwell, Hume Cronyn and Jessica
Tandy.
Rita, first married to
filmmaker Sidney Lumet and then to publisher Thomas Guinzburg, is survived by a
daughter and son (from the second marriage), and three grandchildren.
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