Barbara Bel Geddes Biography

Fast Facts

• Father, Norman, was a theatrical designer, and later an industrial designer who specialized in aerodynamics
• First Hollywood contract had the unusual stipulation that she only had to do one film a year
• Was dropped by new RKO studio head Howard Hughes in 1948 because he deemed her "not sexy enough
• " Was blacklisted for several years in the 1950s following an appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee
• Made Broadway debut in Out of the Frying Pan in 1941, and played Maggie the Cat in the original 1955 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
• Starred in the classic 1958 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Lamb to the Slaughter," in which she killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then served it to investigating detectives
• Had heart surgery in 1984 that forced her to leave the series Dallas
• Donna Reed replaced her as Ewing matriarch Miss Ellie, but Bel Geddes returned to the role the next season
• During her Dallas run (star Larry Hagman once said that she "held the ship together" on the series) her character battled breast cancer in a sensitive plot development that mirrored personal experience with the disease
• While she found "dredging up" the ordeal painful, she took time to discuss the topic during interviews
• Wrote two children's books, I Like to Be Me and So Do I