Dixie Carter Passes Away

[Spirit Dancer]

The lovely Dixie Carter passed away, she was an amazing woman and will be greatly missed.:bunchflowers:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100411/ap_on_en_tv/us_obit_dixie_carter

[pajama]

We have lost a true Southern Lady.

:( A

[Miss Scarlett]

A wonderful actress and beautiful woman.

The first time I saw her was way back in the 70's when she had a role on "The Edge of Night" as a prosecutor named "Brandy."

[Spirit Dancer]

A wonderful actress and beautiful woman.

The first time I saw her was way back in the 70's when she had a role on "The Edge of Night" as a prosecutor named "Brandy."

I had forgotten about that, thank you for reminding me. She was indeed an actress of many faces. But always a southern bell.:)

[Diva]

She was a true Southern lady......and the perfect Sugahbakah......<smile>

You shall be missed, Sweet Dixie.......:stillheart:

[Daywalker]

We loved her to pieces.
:vigil:

:daywalker:

[Rockinonahigh]

Miss.Dixie will be shurely missed.

[WolfyOne]

I read this at 5am when I had only slept 3 hours. Later around 10am I read the article on AOL. It didn't say what she died from which made me even more sad. I really appreciated her as an actress. I think the first time I saw her was in a sitcom and the next thing I remember, she was getting her own sitcom. She will truly be missed by many.

[Andrew, Jr.]

She was married to Hal Hollbrook (sp?). Any word on how or why? Miss. Carter was indeed a true southern lady, by all means & definitions. RIP Miss Carter.

[AtLast]

Sweet Dixie, RIP.

[Duchess]

I will miss her terribly. I've always loved her work, especially when she starred in Filthy Rich. A true lady. (f)

Duchess

[Gemme]

I've always adored her. I saw the blurb on her passing and it made me catch my breath. Perhaps I took her for granted, or just kept her in my memory looking like she did years ago and not aging, but I just didn't expect this.

She was an exemplary lady.

[Andrew, Jr.]

The family released a statement to the press stating that she died because of cancer, but that was it.

[~Bo]

I loved Designing Women. I still watch the reruns.


Sooooooo young to die. :(

[shadows papa]

Ms. Carter was a fellow native Tennessean,a southern lady,a steel magnolia and a class act all the way.Her cutting wit and her true gentility is another part of our culture that is slowly fading away.My heart goes out to Mr. Holbrook and their family and the family of admirers who will miss her.

[sharkchomp]

I'm really saddened by her passing. She just seemed like such a classy lady, not to mention that southern accent - shewwww

~~~shark~~~~~~~~

[sharkchomp]

I didn't know she was a Tennessean! Cool!!!!!!

~~~shark~~~~~~~~

[TxsCharmr]

If anyone ever wanted to know the definition of a true Southern Woman...it is Dixie Carter. Go find some reruns of the tv show "Designing Women". This was not just a character she played...but the way she truly was.

You will be truly missed Ms. Carter.


:peacelove:

[Jedi]

R.I.P. Ms. Dixie Carter....I know I will miss you.

[Legendryder]

This just sucked. Just totally sucked. Damn. She was a cool lady.

[Leigh]

She definately will be missed :stillheart:

[Kimbo]

Very sad news. She was classy, smart and confident. She had my admiration.

[FR]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Carter

--says DC was a registered republican-so unlike the characters she played

[Miss Scarlett]

Here is her obituary from today's NY Times:

April 12, 2010
Dixie Carter, TV Actress, Dies at 70
By ANITA GATES

Dixie Carter, an accomplished actress who gave strong, opinionated Southern women a good name in the television series “Designing Women” in the 1980s and 1990s, and later enjoyed success as a cabaret singer, died on Saturday in a Houston hospital. She was 70 and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif. Her death was announced by her husband, the actor Hal Holbrook, who said that the cause was complications of endometrial cancer.

In “Designing Women,” which ran for seven seasons on CBS, Ms. Carter’s character, Julia Sugarbaker, was the head of an four-woman interior design business in Atlanta and specialized in sarcasm. “If sex were fast food, there’d be an arch over your bed,” she once snapped at her sister Suzanne (played by Delta Burke). Yet when Julia went into a theatrical tirade, which was often, it usually was in the service of some higher social or political principle.

For some time before that, Ms. Carter had been a familiar face on television. She played the sophisticated colleague of two naïve young women in a 1977 series, “On Our Own”; the snooty wife of a plantation owner in “Filthy Rich” in the early 1980s; and the vibrant new stepmother of Gary Coleman in the penultimate season of “Diff’rent Strokes” in 1984 and 1985. She received her first and only Emmy nomination in 2007 for a recurring role as Marcia Cross’s scary mother-in-law on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”

Dixie Virginia Carter was born on May 25, 1939, in McLemoresville, Tenn., which is roughly halfway between Memphis and Nashville. She was one of three children of Halbert Leroy Carter, a grocery and department store owner, and his wife, Virginia. She attended the University of Tennessee and Southwestern at Memphis and graduated from Memphis State.

She said that after hearing a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera at age 4 she immediately decided that she would move to New York to become an opera singer. She made her professional acting debut as Julie Jordan in a 1960 production of “Carousel” in Memphis and moved to New York in 1963.

That same year she played Perdita in a Joseph Papp production of “The Winter’s Tale” in Central Park. She then joined the Music Theater of Lincoln Center, which under the leadership of Richard Rodgers specialized in reviving classic musicals. Yet Ms. Carter never rose above understudy and left in 1966 to join the revues at the Upstairs at the Downstairs nightclub. Among the other performers were Lily Tomlin and Madeline Kahn.

She made her Broadway debut in 1974 in a short-lived musical, “Sextet,” for which she was singled out by critics, and appeared in a 1976 revival of “Pal Joey.” In 1997 she received favorable reviews after replacing Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas in Terence McNally’s “Master Class.” Her final Broadway appearance was in 2004, as Mrs. Meers in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

She said that it was her cabaret career, which began in the 1980s, that brought her the greatest creative satisfaction. “To me, there’s no feeling as gorgeous as the feeling of singing,” she told Stephen Holden of The New York Times in 1984. “It’s like flying.”

Six years later, when Ms. Carter was appearing at Cafe Carlyle, Mr. Holden described her as “one of the most vivid and endearing performers in a field already crowded with idiosyncratic personalities.”

In 1967, Ms. Carter married Arthur L. Carter, a New York investment banker who later became the owner and publisher of The New York Observer. They had two daughters. Ms. Carter left show business for eight years after her marriage. She later said that during that period she gradually lost confidence in her talents — to the point where she was afraid to sing.

“Eventually I lost the idea that I could have a career," she said. "I thought I was too old."

She and Mr. Carter divorced in 1977, and that same year she married the actor George Hearn. That marriage lasted only two years. In 1984 she married Mr. Holbrook, whom she had met doing a 1980 television film, “The Killing of Randy Webster.”

She made relatively few feature films, and her last screen appearance was in “That Evening Sun,” released last year. She played the wife of an elderly Southern farmer (Mr. Holbrook) who was fighting for his property.

In addition to Mr. Holbrook, she is survived by her daughters, Ginna Carter of Los Angeles and Mary Dixie Carter of Brooklyn; a sister Melba Helen Heath of San Anselmo, Calif. and several nieces and nephews.

Although Ms. Carter long ago moved to California for her television career, she and Mr. Holbrook also kept a home in McLemoresville. In 1999, she told The Palm Beach Post that she treasured the courtesy and kindness she found in Tennessee, a welcome contrast to the backstabbing and sniping of Hollywood.

“Of course in the South we talk about people too,” she said. “But if you end your comments with ‘Bless her heart,’ you’re off the hook.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/arts/television/12carter.html?hpw