Grayson Hall

Hall was born Shirley Grossman in Philadelphia in 1922,[4] the only child of Eleanor and Joseph Grossman. Her father was from Latvia and her mother, who had acted in the Yiddish theatre, was from South Africa. Both were from Jewish immigrant families.[2]

When Hall was eight, her parents separated but never divorced. Hall became interested in acting, as an escape from a painful childhood, and auditioned for plays in New York City while she was still attending Simon Gratz High School in North Philadelphia. She enrolled at Temple University but did not matriculate. She landed her first professional job doing summer stock in Long Island in 1942.

In 1946, she married fellow actor Bradbart "Ted" Brooks in Los Angeles. They separated in 1949 and she returned to New York. In 1952, she married writer Sam Hall. Their son, Matthew, was born in 1958. She had always used the stage name Shirley Grayson, but Sam Hall called her Grayson, "like an old Army buddy", she said in an interview. She eventually adopted Grayson Hall as her professional name.[2]

Hall had an active stage career in New York City. Her theater credits included roles in off-Broadway productions of influential avant-garde plays including "Six Characters in Search of an Author" by Luigi Pirandello (Phoenix Theatre, 1955). She also performed in the first New York production of "The Balcony" by Jean Genet for more than a year at (Circle in the Square Downtown) in Greenwich Village. In The Balcony she portrayed Irma, the madam of a most irregular bordello in the midst of a revolutionary uprising. It was the longest running off-Broadway play for many decades. She was succeeded in the role by Nancy Marchand.[5][6]

Having guest starred on various television programs during the mid-1950s, Hall made her film debut in 1961 in Run Across the River. Hall also made Satan in High Heels, starring Meg Myles, in which Hall portrayed a cabaret club owner named Pepe. She later disavowed the film.

In September 1963, Hall traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to play the role of Judith Fellowes in John Huston's version of The Night of the Iguana, based on the original play by Tennessee Williams.[7] She was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Fellowes, a latent lesbian women's college instructor. In the original play, the character was not sympathetic but Huston rewrote the character, wanting more complexity and sympathy.

She was featured as a kidnapped bank teller in Walt Disney's That Darn Cat! in 1965. In 1967, she played a high-profile middle-aged literary editor who becomes a Thrush agent on the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., in an episode written by Harlan Ellison.[8]

After a six-month battle with lung cancer, Hall died at New York Hospital in Manhattan in 1985, age 62. A simple marker near her Rhinebeck, New York home reads "Grayson Hall — August 7, 1985".[11]

• Hamrick, Craig & Jamison, R. J. Barnabas & Company: The Cast of the TV Classic Dark Shadows (revised 2012) iUniverse, amazon.com; accessed October 31, 2012.

• Grayson Hall official website
• Grayson Hall on IMDb
• Grayson Hall at the Internet Broadway Database
• Grayson Hall at the Internet Off-Broadway Database