Carrie Nye
Encyclopedia

Early life

Nye was born Caroline Nye McGeoy in Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta approximately 96 miles north of Jackson, Mississippi, and 130 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. The population was 15,205 at the 2010 census. It is the...

; her father was a vice president of a local bank. She attended Stephens College
Stephens College
Stephens College is a women's college located in Columbia, Missouri. It is the second oldest female educational establishment that is still a women's college in the United States. It was founded on August 24, 1833 as the Columbia Female Academy. In 1856, David H. Hickman turned it into a college,...

 and then went on to the Yale School of Drama
Yale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...

.

Career

The majority of Nye's roles were on the stage. She joined the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1955 and portrayed a number of roles at the festival through the 1960s and 1970s. Among her credits were the leads in The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Skin of Our Teeth is a play by Thornton Wilder which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942 at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 1942...

and A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

. She was part of a cast from the American Shakespeare Festival that performed Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...

at the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 during the John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 administration.

She made her debut on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 in 1960 with a role in the play A Second String. The following year she portrayed Tiffany Richards in the original cast of Mary, Mary
Mary, Mary (play)
Mary, Mary is a play by Jean Kerr. The play became one of the longest-running productions of the decade. After two previews, the Broadway production opened on March 8, 1961 at the original Helen Hayes Theatre , where it ran for nearly three years and nine months before transferring to the Morosco...

. She was nominated for a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 in 1965 for her portrayal of Helen Walsingham in Half a Sixpence
Half a Sixpence
Half a Sixpence is a musical comedy written as a vehicle for British pop star Tommy Steele.It is based on H.G. Wells's novel Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul...

. She appeared in two more productions on Broadway during the 1960s, A Very Rich Woman (1965) and Cop-Out (1969).

Nye made her feature film debut in The Group
The Group (film)
The Group is a 1966 ensemble film directed by Sidney Lumet based on the novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about a group of female graduates from a Connecticut College-like college during the early 1930s....

(1966), the film adaptation of Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...

's bestselling novel about a group of Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

 students. The film also starred Joan Hackett
Joan Hackett
Joan Ann Hackett was an American actress who appeared on stage, in films, and on television.- Early life :She was born in New York City of Irish and Italian extraction...

, Joanna Pettet
Joanna Pettet
Joanna Pettet is a British actress.-Biography:Her parents, Harold Nigel Edgerton Salmon, a British Royal Air Force pilot killed in World War II, and mother, Cecily J. Tremaine, were married in London in 1940...

, Candice Bergen
Candice Bergen
Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress and former fashion model.She is known for starring in two TV series, as the title character on the situation comedy Murphy Brown , for which she won five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards; and as Shirley Schmidt on the comedy-drama Boston Legal...

, Kathleen Widdoes
Kathleen Widdoes
-Life and career:Widdoes was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Bernice and Eugene Widdoes. Widdoes moved to New York City to pursue stage work and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris under a Fulbright scholarship. From 1964 to 1972 she was married to well known actor Richard Jordan, with...

, and Shirley Knight
Shirley Knight
Shirley Enola Knight is an American stage, film and television actress. She has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, in 1960 for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and in 1962 for Sweet Bird of Youth....

.

Nye was featured in a number of television movies during the 1970s, including Screaming Skull and The Users
The Users (film)
The Users is a 1978 television film directed by Joseph Hardy. The film, whose executive producer was Aaron Spelling, is based on a Joyce Haber novel released in the same year...

. She acted in the television movie Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973), which starred Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

 and Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

. Nye wrote a humorous essay that year published in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

about the experience. In 1978, Nye was a semi-regular panelist on the PBS quiz show We Interrupt This Week.

She was nominated in 1980 for an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...

 for her portrayal of the actress Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...

 - an actress to whom Nye was often compared - in Moviola: The Scarlett O'Hara War. That same year she returned to Broadway to perform the role of Lorraine Sheldon in a revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...

. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

 for her performance.

In 1984, Nye was cast on the daytime soap opera Guiding Light
Guiding Light
Guiding Light is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running drama in television and radio history, running from 1937 until 2009...

as the real estate agent Susan Piper. Her character had a memorable death scene where she fell into quicksand. When Nye's friend Ellen Weston
Ellen Weston
Ellen Weston is an American actress, producer, and writer. Born Ellen Weinstein in New York City, Ellen Weston appeared on Broadway in Toys in the Attic, A Far Country, and Mary, Mary, among other productions.Her first notable television role was a stint as Robin Fletcher on soap opera Guiding...

 became head writer of Guiding Light
Guiding Light
Guiding Light is an American daytime television drama that is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running drama in television and radio history, running from 1937 until 2009...

in 2003, she created another character for Nye. Despite acclaim for Nye's performance, the storyline was unpopular, and Nye's character was written off shortly after.

Nye played Sylvia Grantham in the classic 1982 horror film Creepshow
Creepshow
Creepshow is a 1982 American horror anthology film directed by George A. Romero and written by Stephen King. The film's ensemble cast included Ted Danson, Leslie Nielsen, Hal Holbrook, E.G...

.

Personal life

Nye was married to Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett
Richard Alva "Dick" Cavett is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues...

, whom she met at Yale, from June 4, 1964 until her death.

Nye and Cavett bought Tick Hall, a house in Montauk, New York
Montauk, New York
Montauk [ˈmɒntɒk] is a census-designated place that roughly corresponds to the hamlet with the same name located in the town of East Hampton in Suffolk County, New York, United States on the South Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the CDP population was 3,851 as of 2000...

 designed by Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...

. The house burned down in 1997, but with the assistance of architects and preservationists, she and Cavett built an exact replica of the house. Their accomplishment became the subject of a documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall
From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall
From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall is a documentary film made in 2003 by filmmaker Scott Morris. It is about the historic Montauk, New York home known as Tick Hall...

(2003).

Nye died of lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

 on July 14, 2006 at her Manhattan home. She is interred in the Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, New York.

External links

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