Marsha Mason

Mason has had a distinguished career in film and theater. Her film debut in Blume in Love early 1973 had Neil Simon smitten and he cast her in his Broadway play The Good Doctor.[1] Shortly afterwards, Mason and Simon, a widower, fell in love and got married. That same year, Mason co-starred opposite James Caan in the 20th Century Fox film Cinderella Liberty, which netted her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. In 1977, Mason's performance in Simon's smash hit film, The Goodbye Girl, won her a second Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 1979, Simon successfully cast Mason as Jennie MacLaine in the screen adaptation of his hit play Chapter Two, which was based on Mason's relationship with Simon up to their marriage. The film proved to be another big hit, garnering her a third Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Mason at the premiere of Seems Like Old Times (1980)

In 1981, Mason starred along with Kristy McNichol, James Coco, and Joan Hackett in Only When I Laugh, Simon's film adaptation of his Broadway comedy-drama The Gingerbread Lady; it was another box-office success. For her performance as Georgia Hines, Mason was highly praised and earned a fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Mason's Max Dugan Returns (1983), also written by Simon, grossed a modest $17.6 million at the box office. Despite a stellar cast led by Mason, Donald Sutherland, Jason Robards and Matthew Broderick, the film was a slow starter, becoming more popular after premiering on cable TV and VHS. By this time, Mason and Simon had divorced, and her film career lost momentum. She co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge, which was fairly well received and a commercial success. Mason also played a supporting role in the 1990 motion picture Stella starring Bette Midler, a remake of the 1937 film Stella Dallas.

Mason played in a New York production of Harold Pinter's Old Times. She next directed the play Juno's Swans (1986), by E. Katherine Kerr, at the Second Stage Theatre in Los Angeles.[2]

Her stage credits include Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx, Neil Simon's The Good Doctor and Joseph Papp's 1974 Richard III at the Lincoln Center.[3] Mason starred on Broadway in a revival of Night of the Iguana in 1996, and the following year in Michael Cristofer's Amazing Grace. Mason reunited with Goodbye Girl co-star Richard Dreyfuss and writer Neil Simon in Duncan Weldon and Emanuel Azenberg's production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1999, which was performed at the L.A. Theatre Works shortly after a revival in London's West End. She earned a Grammy nomination in comedy.[4]

Mason in 2010

She appeared in Charles L. Mee's Wintertime at the Second Stage theatre in New York. In August 2005 Mason starred as Hecuba at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and on Broadway in Steel Magnolias, with Delta Burke, Frances Sternhagen, Rebecca Gayheart, Lily Rabe and Christine Ebersole. She appeared in A Feminine Ending at Playwrights Horizons, and in the Shakespeare Theater Company's performance of All's Well That Ends Well in Washington, D.C.[5]

Mason's recent television work includes guest roles on Seinfeld, Lipstick Jungle, and Army Wives. Mason starred in her own series, Sibs, which ran from 1991–92. In 1997 and 1998, she had a recurring role on the TV show Frasier as Sherry Dempsey. In February 2010, she co-starred in California Suite at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.[6]

Mason played Patricia Heaton's mother in ABC comedy series The Middle[7] from 2010 to its conclusion in 2018.

In April 2010, Mason co-starred with Keir Dullea and Matt Servitto in an Off-Broadway production of I Never Sang for My Father.[8] For her performance as Margaret Garrison, Mason received good reviews.[9][10]

Mason has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.[11]

She teaches at HB Studio[12] (Herbert Berghof Studio) in New York City.[13]

Mason was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Jacqueline Helena (Rakowski) and James Joseph Mason, a printer.[14][15][16] She and her younger sister, Linda (b. 1943), were raised Catholic and grew up in Crestwood. Mason is a graduate of Nerinx Hall High School and Webster University, both in Webster Groves. While at Webster, she performed in a variety of theatrical productions.[17] She raced a Mazda RX-3 in SCCA events.

Mason was married to actor Gary Campbell from 1965 until they divorced in 1970. Her second marriage, to playwright Neil Simon, lasted from 1973 until their 1983 divorce.

A former, long-time resident of New Mexico, she had a farm[18] in Abiquiu that grew certified organic herbs. In the late 1990s, Mason sold herbs wholesale to companies both locally and regionally before starting a line of wellness and bath and body products called "Resting in the River". Now based in New York City, in 2018 she completed building a contemporary home on a hayfield in bucolic Litchfield County, Connecticut where she presently resides.[19]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marsha Mason.

• Marsha Mason on IMDb
• Marsha Mason at the Internet Broadway Database
• Marsha Mason at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Marsha Mason Papers at Webster University
• St. Louis Walk of Fame
• "Marsha Mason: A Conversation for Women's History Month", Broadway World, March 29, 2010
• "With: Marsha Mason", American Theatre Wing, March 31, 2010
• "SURVIVAL KIT: MARSHA MASON", WNYC, March 28, 2004