Barbara Bel Geddes, the distinguished American actress who was critically lauded for her early performances on Broadway and the silver screen, but achieved her biggest success as the virtuoso matriarch on the long-running TV series Dallas, died on August 8 of lung cancer at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine. She was 82.

Barbara Bel Geddes was born in New York City on October 31, 1922. Her father, Norman Geddes, was a noted theatrical stage designer and architect; and he coined the name "Bel Geddes" as the name of an architecture magazine he was launching.

Having a father who had worked on dozens of stage productions on Broadway was certainly a useful connection for young Barbara, and he helped her land her first job in summer stock in Connecticut when she was 16. Her father might have opened the door, but Barbara, a bright ingenue who was intelligent as she was attractive, was a quick study, and she earned her first Broadway role in 1941 for Out of the Frying Pan, when she was only 18. Her career slowly blossomed and she reached a breakthrough in 1945, and won the Best Actress Award from the New York Drama Critics (the highest acting honor for Broadway at the time, since the Tony Awards were not instigated until 1947) in the daring interracial love story Deep Are the Roots.

Naturally, an actress of her considerable talent attracted the attention of Hollywood, and in 1946, she signed a seven-year contract with RKO. Her film debut, opposite Henry Fonda, was a disappointing noir thriller The Long Night (1947); her second film, Blood on the Moon (1948) was an offbeat western that paired her with Robert Mitchum; but it would be her third film that caught the attention of moviegoers - the role of Katrin, the budding authoress whose first-person narration frames George Stevens' I Remember Mama - a loving look at a Norwegian family in turn of the century San Francisco. Bel Geddes was luminous in her performance, and she rightfully earned an Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Curiously, her film career never quite caught fire after that, despite some good films: Elia Kazan's underrated thriller Panic in the Streets (1950); Henry Hathaway's drama about a potential suicide Fourteen Hours (1951); Alfred Hitchcock's classic Vertigo (1958); and Danny Kaye's long-suffering wife in The Five Pennies (1959).

These were all solid examples of a professional actress delivering heartfelt performaces, but it never elevated her beyond the status of a second lead in cinema. Happily, Bel Geddes found comfort on Broadway and achieved her two greatest successes on the stage: in 1956, she played Maggie in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and in 1961, she was Mary in the comedy Mary, Mary, and she earned Tony nominations for both performances.

For the next several years, she would alternate her time between the stage and film, until 1978, when she was offered the role of saintly matriarch Miss Ellie, of the Ewing family, in the cult smash television drama Dallas. Offering grace and class to a show that really wasn't much more than a soap/horse opera, she won an Emmy Award in 1980 for her portrayl. Her career was curtailed briefly in 1983, when she suffered a heart attack. She was off the show for one season in 1984-85, with Donna Reed temporarily replacing her. But she returned in the 1985-86 season, and stayed until 1990, when she retired from acting for good. She is survived by her daughters, Susan and Betsy; and grandchildren, Samantha, Hannah and Joshua.

by Michael T. Toole