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| Birth Name(s) : Mary Kay Place |
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Full Mary Kay Place Biography
Mary Kay Place (b. September 23, 1947, Port Arthur, Texas) is an American actress, singer, director and screen writer.
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.”
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was one of the biggest cult television programs of all time. The show centered around the sex-crazed Haggers couple and the almost sexless Mary (Louise Lasser) and Tom Hartman (Greg Mullavey). Mary was Loretta’s best friend and Tom was Charlie’s best friend. Tom and Charlie worked together at the plant in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. Loretta never really did make the big time, but she did have marginal success. In one episode, Loretta makes an appearance on The Dinah Shore Show. She was talking about all of the people who had helped her along her way. During a break, she was told that some of those people were Jews. After that, she referred to Jews as “them that what killed our Lord”. The host quickly signaled to cut to commercial. (Shore was Jewish in real life).
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman 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).
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”).
In films since 1976's Bound for Glory, Place has only occasionally been given a chance to shine on the big screen. The best of her early movie roles include Bernice, the washout nightclub singer who briefly replaces Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1976), and "Meg", the reconstituted "child of the sixties" who desperately craves motherhood in The Big Chill (1983).
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 Reynods down in the elevator in her building in a last ditch attempt to make him fall for her. Instead, she just falls on him.
Place was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award's 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. Place also directed episodes of HBO sitcom Dream On, NBC’s Friends and the movie Baby Boom. She recently 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.
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 also in Human Nature starring Tim Robbins and Patricia Arquette and A Woman's a Helluva Thing with Penelope Ann Miller.
2002 also saw the release of the film in which Place buddies up 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 plays Brooks' best friend. The film marks the directorial debut for Chicago Hope's Christine Lahti.
Place was also 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, finally, with Jared Leto in Girl, Interrupted. In 2000 Mary Kay co-directed Don Henley’s video for “Taking You Home”. Also in 2000, she had a small part in her second Lisa Krueger movie, Committed.
In 2001 she played the United States Surgeon General on NBC’s The West Wing. The character was revived for episodes in the 2004 season.
On May 9, 2003, the University of Tulsa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa inducted Place as an honorary alumna member. |
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