Jennifer Harmon Dies at 82 After Five-Decade Career
Jennifer Harmon died on Saturday May 9 at the age of 82, ending a five-decade career that moved from Broadway to daytime television and back again. Her relatives announced the news, and no cause of death was revealed.
Broadway in 1965
Her career began in 1965 with You Can't Take It With You on Broadway, and she later became a frequent understudy for actresses including Judi Dench and Jessica Lange. That assignment path says as much about her value in the room as any single credit: she was trusted to step in on major stages before she was later handed a permanent role in Other Desert Cities.
How to Survive a Marriage
From 1974 to 1975, Harmon was the leading lady of the NBC soap opera How to Survive a Marriage. Two years later, she joined One Life to Live as Cathy Craig and became the fifth performer to play the part, then earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for outstanding lead actress in a drama series in 1978. For daytime producers, that kind of turnover meant the role had to hold even as the actor changed.
Dallas and 2011
In 1979, she appeared in Dallas as a secretary, adding prime-time television to a résumé already split between stage and soap work. Her final TV appearance came in The Good Wife in 2010, and one of her last professional roles before her death was in Other Desert Cities in 2011, where she first covered for Stockard Channing before eventually stepping into the part permanently.
What survives now is a body of work spread across The School for Scandal, Blithe Spirit, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Little Foxes, The Deep Blue Sea, Amy's View, The Glass Menagerie and Seascape. The response after her death already points to how she was remembered: as one Facebook tribute put it, "We lost the brilliant and delightful Jennifer Harmon this past weekend. Another star dimmed."
