Considerably edited down, from the L.A. Times:
Kim Stanley, best known on Broadway in the 1950s for such roles as Cherie, the small-town “chantoosie” of William Inge’s “Bus Stop,” died Monday in Santa Fe, N.M., of uterine cancer. She was 76. Her acting career, which afforded her memorable turns as a variety of sensitive souls and obsessive monsters, included a brief apprenticeship with the Pasadena Playhouse. More crucially, she became a student at the Actors Studio in New York under the mentorship of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg.
Stanley appeared in five motion pictures, beginning with “The Goddess” in 1958 and ending with “The Right Stuff” in 1983. In “The Goddess” she portrayed a Marilyn Monroe-style star, somewhat against type given Stanley’s down-home, frayed-edges appeal. On screen, Monroe took the “Bus Stop” role introduced on stage by Stanley. Despite her limited film output, Stanley received two Oscar nominations: for her portrayal of the crazed medium in “Seance on a Wet Afternoon” (1964), then–after an 18-year screen absence–for the raging mother of Frances Farmer in “Frances” (1982).
Most recently, Stanley taught at the College of Santa Fe; she also taught acting in Los Angeles over the years. Stanley developed her stage chops laboring in the fledgling off-Broadway movement. She did everything from e.e. cummings to Gertrude Stein and claimed to understand little of the often unconventional material. Stanley’s first major Broadway success came as the moony tomboy in Inge’s “Picnic,” directed by Joshua Logan. In it a 27-year-old Stanley, at the time in the first of her three marriages, played a convincing and heartfelt 12-year-old. Inge’s “Bus Stop” provided Stanley with an even greater Broadway success two seasons later. Her extensive television credits, dominated in the 1950s and early '60s by such anthologies as “Goodyear TV Playhouse” and “Magnavox Theater,” led to two Emmy awards. The first came for her 1963 episode of “Ben Casey”; the second, the PBS/American Playhouse airing of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1984. In “Cat,” Stanley played Big Mama.
