Madeleine Sherwood, who starred in the stage and film versions of the Tennessee Williams classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, has died. She was 93.
Sherwood, perhaps best known as the non-nonsense Reverend Mother Superior Lydia Placido on the 1967-70 ABC sitcom The Flying Nun starring Sally Field, died Saturday at her childhood home in Lac Cornu, Quebec, family spokesperson Melissa Fitch told The Hollywood Reporter.
A native of Montreal, Sherwood studied under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. She made her Broadway debut in 1952 replacing Kim Stanley in Horton Foote’s The Chase, and a year later, she played Abigail, who accuses many in the town of Salem of witchcraft, in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
Sherwood portrayed Mae Pollitt/Sister Woman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan, then reprised the role for Richard Brooks in the 1958 film adaptation. In Sweet Bird of Youth, she starred as Miss Lucy on Broadway in 1959-60 and in the 1962 movie.
Read on. For a nostalgia blast, take a minute to watch the show’s opening, below. They don’t make them like this anymore.
