Mary Kay Place

Mary Kay Place (born September 23, 1947) is an American actress, singer, director and screen writer.

Early life & career

Place was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the daughter of Bradley E. Place.^[1] She graduated from Nathan Hale High School and the University of Tulsa, where her father was an art professor^[2] and where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, with a speech degree. Place moved to Hollywood with aspirations of becoming an actress and writer. She was hired for The Tim Conway Comedy Hour in the 1970s as a production assistant to both Conway and producer Norman Lear. It was Conway who gave her her first on-camera break, while it was Lear who saw to it that Place received her first writing credit on his subsequent All in the Family. On the episode, she sang “If Communism Comes Knocking on Your Door, Don’t Answer It.”

Mary Hartman and musical career

Lear then cast her in the role of would-be country and western star Loretta Haggers on the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976 – 1977). She won an Emmy Award for her work as Loretta, and was later nominated for a Grammy Award for her spin-off musical album Tonite! At the Capri Lounge Loretta Haggers. Place wrote two of the songs on Tonite!: “Vitamin L” and “Baby Boy,” both of which she sang on the program as Loretta. Both showed that she knew how to capitalize on the character’s personality and comic effects.

“Vitamin L” is “love, you see, and without it, well, it’s hell.” (pronounced “hayull”). “Baby Boy”, which actually charted on country radio, told the story of Loretta and Charlie Haggers (played by Graham Jarvis). The couple was forever trying to conceive (the joke being that she was half his age and the sex was non-stop). “Baby Boy” was mythical in that she announced “I just found out today that our baby’s on the way.”

Both albums featured A-list country and pop performers from the 1970s. Dolly Parton, on whom the Loretta character was loosely based, provided backing vocals as well as the song “All I Can Do" (which Parton also wrote). Emmylou Harris, Anne Murray and Nicolette Larson sang backup as well. Aimin’ to Please’s “Something to Brag About,” a duet with Willie Nelson, earned the pair a place on the music charts in 1977.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was one of the biggest cult television programs of all time.^{[citation needed]} The show ended when Louise Lasser left the show in 1977, but the remaining cast stayed on for one more year to tape Forever Fernwood. The series ended with Loretta and Charlie finally getting the child that they had always wanted. While working on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Place also wrote scripts for several TV situation comedies, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis and M*A*S*H, usually in collaboration with Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (who would later create Designing Women). She also appeared in at least one episode of the TV series M*A*S*H as a member of the nursing staff.

Place hosted Saturday Night Live in 1977 and was one of the few hosts who also appeared as the musical guest (with Willie Nelson on the duet “Something to Brag About”).

The best of her early films were in 1976's Bound for Glory and as Bernice, the nightclub singer who briefly replaces Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1976).

Late 70s through 1990s

In the 1979 Burt Reynolds film, Starting Over, Place plays the first woman whom Reynolds dates after a divorce. On their blind date, Place's character is a bit too zealous and practically knocks Reynolds down in the elevator in her building in a last ditch attempt to make him fall for her. Instead, she just falls on him.

In 1983, Place had a key role in the Lawrence Kasdan ensemble piece The Big Chill as Meg, a single corporate attorney who wishes to be impregnated with her first child by one of her past college friends.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the actress appeared in a number of television movies and a starring role in the 1992 Kurt Russell and Martin Short comedy Captain Ron. 1994 saw her return to television in the recurring role of Camille Cherski on My So Called Life. She had a strong dramatic role as Dot Black, mother of a terminally ill young man, in Francis Ford Coppola’s version of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker in 1997.

Place was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her work in the 1996 film Manny & Lo. She plays the matronly Elaine, who would love to have a child and works in a maternity shop, but never married and is past her child-bearing years.

She directed episodes of the HBO sitcom Dream On, NBC’s Friends and the series Baby Boom. She provided at least two voices for Fox’s animated show King of the Hill in an episode in which "Peggy Hill" competes in the Mrs. Heimlich County Pageant. She voiced both a competitor and the coordinator of the pageant.

2000 to present

Place appeared in Being John Malkovich as the receptionist with a reception problem, Floris, and in Girl, Interrupted. While not in any scenes together, this marked the third time that Mary Kay had done a film with one of her former My So-Called Life co-stars. First it was Claire Danes in The Rainmaker, secondly with Bess Armstrong in Pecker and next with Jared Leto in Girl, Interrupted.

In 2000, the actress co-directed Don Henley’s video for “Taking You Home”. She had a small part in her second Lisa Krueger movie, Committed.

She played the United States Surgeon General in a 2001 episode of NBC’s The West Wing. The character returned in the 2004 season.

In the original PBS mini-series Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Place had a self-referential moment as a Maupin character during the Mary Hartman era in which the series is set. Laura Linney's character often watched Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Showtime picked up the Tales franchise, but Place was not in the second installment. She did have a role in the third mini-series, Further Tales of the City (2001), which featured her in the role of "Prue Giroux."

In 2002, Place had a sizable role in the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama as Witherspoon's character's mother, "Pearl Smooter." That same year she was in Human Nature starring Tim Robbins and Patricia Arquette and A Woman's a Helluva Thing with Penelope Ann Miller as well as with Albert Brooks in the dark comedy My First Mister. The story focuses on a developing relationship between an isolated, rebellious 18-year-old (Leelee Sobieski) and an engaging older man (Brooks). Place played Brooks' best friend. The film marked the directorial debut of actress Christine Lahti.

Place played a Mormon mother in the film Latter Days (2003). Since 2006, she has also had a recurring role in HBO's Big Love, playing Adaleen Grant, the mother of the Chloë Sevigny character, Nicki.

Lily Tomlin and Place did the pilot and 5 episodes of 12 Miles of Bad Road from Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who wrote television scripts with Place in the 1970s. HBO chose not to air the series, and producers were seeking other networks to air it.

Personal life

Mary Kay Place has never married nor has she had any children.

Credits

• Youth in Revolt
• "Pushing Daisies"
• City of Ember
• "Big Love"
• "12 Miles of Bad Road"
• The Toe Tactic
• "Saving Grace"
• Mama's Boy
• War Eagle, Arkansas
• "The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman"
• Grace Is Gone
• "Grey's Anatomy"
• "Numb3rs"
• "Jack & Bobby"
• Nine Lives
• Lonesome Jim
• "The West Wing"
• Silver City
• "King of The Hill"
• Killer Diller
• Death and Texas
• Evergreen
• "The Handler"
• Nobody Knows Anything!
• Latter Days
• "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"
• Sweet Home Alabama
• "Undeclared"
• Junk
• "Citizen Baines"
• A Woman's a Helluva Thing
• Human Nature
• "Further Tales of the City"
• The Safety of Objects
• Nailed
• My First Mister
• "Leap Years"
• "The Wild Thornberrys"
• Committed
• Girl, Interrupted
• Being John Malkovich
• Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story
• Point Last Seen
• Pecker
• How to Make the Cruelest Month
• Naturally Native
• The Rainmaker
• Love in Another Town (by Barbara Taylor Bradford)
• Eye of God
• For My Daughter's Honor
• Manny & Lo
• My Very Best Friend
• Citizen Ruth
• "Chicago Hope"
• "My So-Called Life"
• Teresa's Tattoo
• Leslie's Folly
• In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance
• "Tales of the City"
• Telling Secrets
• Just My Imagination
• Samantha
• Captain Ron
• Bed of Lies
• Crazy from the Heart
• Bright Angel
• "thirtysomething"
• Traitor in My House
• Out on the Edge
• A New Life
• Portrait of a White Marriage
• The Girl Who Spelled Freedom
• The History of White People in America: Volume II
• Smooth Talk
• Explorers
• The History of White People in America
• For Love or Money
• "ABC Afterschool Special" ("Mom's on Strike" episode)
• Terms of Endearment
• The Big Chill
• Waltz Across Texas
• Modern Problems
• Private Benjamin
• Act of Love
• Starting Over
• More American Graffiti
• New York, New York
• "Forever Fernwood"
• Bound for Glory
• The Cheerleaders
• "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"
• "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
• "M*A*S*H"
• "Temperatures Rising"
• "All in the Family"

Personal Appearances

• "Today"
• "Entertainment Tonight"
• "Biography"
• "TV Land Moguls"
• "The Rosie O'Donnell Show"
• "Intimate Portrait" (narrated for Christine Lahti & Laura Dern)
• "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"
• "Saturday Night Live"
• "Dinah!"
• "The Merv Griffin Show"

Director

• The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman TV series
• Arli$$ TV series
• Friends TV series
• Dream On (1990) TV series
• Baby Boom TV series

Screenwriter

• The Mary Tyler Moore Show TV series
  • Mary's Delinquent (1975)
• M*A*S*H TV series
  • Mad Dogs and Servicemen (1974)
  • Springtime (1974)
  • Hot Lips and Empty Arms (1973)
• Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers (1974)

Discography

Albums

Singles

References

External links

• Mary Kay Place at the Internet Movie Database
• The Mary Kay Place Place