Mariette Hartley

Mariette Hartley
Born	Mary Loretta Hartley June 21, 1940 (1940-06-21) (age 69) Weston, Connecticut United States
Occupation	Film, television actress
Spouse(s)	John Seventa (1960-1962; divorced) Patrick Boyriven (1978-1996; divorced) 2 children

Mary Loretta "Mariette" Hartley (born June 21, 1940) is an American character actress.

Biography

Personal life

Hartley was born in Weston, Connecticut, the daughter of Mary Ickes “Polly” (née Watson), a manager and saleswoman, and Paul Hembree Hartley, an account executive.^[1] Her maternal grandfather was psychologist John B. Watson (through Watson’s daughter from his first marriage) and her maternal grandmother was the sister of politician Harold L. Ickes.

In her 1990 autobiography Breaking the Silence, written with Anne Commire, Hartley talked about her struggles with psychological problems, pointing directly at Watson’s practical application of his theories as the source of the dysfunction in his family. She has also spoken in public about her experience of bipolar disorder, and was a founder of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention^[2]. Mariette spoke about her father's suicide at a suicide and violence prevention forum in 2009.^[3]

Career

Hartley began her career in her teens as a stage actress, coached and mentored by the noted Eva Le Gallienne. Her film career began with Ride the High Country (1962), a western with actors Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, and directed by Sam Peckinpah. She also had a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964).

In the 1963-1964 television season, she appeared in an episode of ABC’s drama about college life, Channing. In 1966, she appeared as Polly Dockery in the series finale, "A Burying for Rosey", of ABC's western, The Legend of Jesse James with Christopher Jones.

She also worked with Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, two famed creators of television and film science fiction. She first appeared in Serling’s 1964 The Twilight Zone episode “The Long Morrow”. In 1969, she acted in the next-to-last Star Trek episode, "All Our Yesterdays". She appeared in several science fiction films, Marooned (1969), Earth II (1971), and the pilot for the post-apocalyptic Genesis II (1973), another Roddenberry production.

On television, she portrayed Dr. Claire Morton, the daughter of Kent Smith’s character on the primetime adaption of Peyton Place. In 1978, she appeared in the TV series Logan’s Run, based on the film of the same name, and in The Incredible Hulk alongside Bill Bixby in two episodes. As Dr. Carolyn Fields, she marries the title character; for her performance, Hartley won an Emmy Award. Hartley appeared in an episode of M*A*S*H as Dr. Inga Halverson. She also co-starred with Bixby in the 1983 situation comedy Goodnight, Beantown. She appeared in two episodes of the mystery series Columbo, starring Peter Falk as the rumpled detective. In 1979, she portrayed the Witch in ABC’s holiday telefilm The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (aka The Night Dracula Saved The World).

During the late 1970s, Hartley also appeared with James Garner in a popular series of television commercials advertising Polaroid cameras. The two actors worked so well together that it was often erroneously supposed that they were married in real life. Her biography contains a photo of her in a T-shirt proclaiming, “I am NOT Mrs. James Garner.” Hartley also guest-starred in a memorable episode of Garner’s TV series The Rockford Files during this period. The script required them to kiss at one point. Unknown to them, a paparazzo was photographing the scene from a distance. The photos were run in a tabloid trying to provoke a scandal, causing a good deal of attention. (An article that ran in TV Guide was titled, “That woman is not James Garner’s wife!”)

In the 1990s, she toured with Elliott Gould and Doug Wert in the revival of the mystery Deathtrap. She also hosted the television documentary series "Wild About Animals". Hartley stars in her own one-woman show, If You Get to Bethlehem, You've Gone Too Far, currently running in Los Angeles. In addition, she played Dorothy Spiller, the mother of Courteney Cox’s character on the drama series Dirt on FX Networks and is featured as Ceptembre Sage Weller in Guruyouu.com’s Shhh ... a spoof based on The Secret DVD. Hartley has also had a recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Lorna Scarry. She appeared as a patient with memory loss on Grey's Anatomy.

Awards and recognition

• Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the episode “Married” of The Incredible Hulk (1978)

See also

• See Clearly Method
• Photograph of Hartley at All Our Yesterdays

Further reading

• Breaking the Silence, Mariette Hartley and Anne Commire, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1990.

References

External links

• Mariette Hartley at the Internet Movie Database
• Mariette Hartley at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• USA Today article about her experience of bipolar disorder
• Mariette Hartley's personal web site
• "Mariette Hartley's autobiography and John B. Watson" -- article about the children of psychologists J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, and what Mariette Hartley (Watson's granddaughter) had to say about the family saga in Breaking the Silence