Georgia Engel
Actress who found fame on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was acclaimed on and off Broadway
GEORGIA ENGEL, who has died aged 70, was a featheryvoiced actress who rose to fame as Georgette Franklin Baxter, the ditzy strawberry-blonde wife of the pompous television news anchor Ted Baxter (played by Ted Knight) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1972 until 1977.
She was acting on stage when she caught the attention of Mary Tyler Moore and her producer husband, Grant Tinker. “The part was originally only going to be a bit, a small scene at a party,” Georgia Engel recalled. “But the girl did good and Mary just kept calling me back for more.”
A perfect foil to the composed Mary Tyler Moore, she stayed with the show until it ended in 1977 and was twice nominated for an Emmy.
With her pinpoint comic precision, Georgia Engel enjoyed a career mostly on stage and on television. From the mid-1970s onwards she had regular guest slots on such popular shows as Rhoda, Mork and Mindy, The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
More recently she had a recurring role as Pat Mcdougall in the hit series Everybody Loves Raymond, for which she received several Emmy nominations. The episode “Pat’s Secret”, in which Raymond’s hapless brother Robert tries to keep the nicotine habit of his mother-in-law (Georgia Engel) secret, was so wellreceived that a spin-off was mooted, though it never saw the light of day.
Georgia Bright Engel was born on July 28 1948 in Washington DC to Ruth and Benjamin Engel. She caught the acting bug at high school in Bethesda, Maryland, taking the lead as Ado Annie in Oklahoma!.
She won a scholarship to the Academy of the Washington Ballet, then graduated in theatre studies from the University of Hawaii. Returning to Washington, in the early 1960s she had roles at the semi-professional American Light Opera Company.
With a few solid leads under her belt, Georgia Engel moved to New York, where in 1969 she appeared off-broadway in the revue Lend an Ear, and on Broadway as the hat shop girl Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly!.
She made her big-screen debut in Milos Forman’s Bafta-nominated comedy Taking Off (1971), and then played a hostage victim in the Los Angeles-set French thriller The Outside Man (1972), with Jean-louis Trintignant and Ann-margret.
By then, she had appeared in the John Guare play The House of Blue Leaves, set in New York in 1965 on the day of Pope Paul VI’S visit. The 1971 production opened off-broadway then toured to Los Angeles, where Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker saw it – and spotted Georgia Engel.
After The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended she and Betty White, who had also featured in the series, joined forces for the short-lived The Betty White Show (1977-78).
During the 1980s, Georgia Engel danced with Christopher Walken, Ginger Rogers, Dick Van Dyke, Donny Osmond and others in the charity telethon Night of 100 Stars II (1985), and she played Loretta Smoot in the sitcom Goodtime Girls (1980). Set in the 1940s, it told of the adventures of Loretta and her flatmates living in a cramped attic apartment while trying to make it in New York.
Georgia Engel took several roles in The Love Boat (1977-82) and was in another sitcom, Jennifer Slept Here (1983-84), about a wealthy family who move into the house of a late screen siren whose ghost can only be seen by the family’s young son.
She also remained active in the theatre. During the early 1990s she toured with the musical comedy Nunsense – reprising her role in 2003 for an all-star anniversary reunion – then appeared on Broadway in another musical, The Drowsy Chaperone.
She had a recurring role between 1991 and 1997 in the sporting sitcom Coach, and her later work included voicing a giraffe in Dr Dolittle 2 (2001), starring Eddie Murphy; the Cameron Diaz comedy The Sweetest Thing (2002); three episodes of the US version of The Office; and two episodes of the comedy Two and a Half Men (2012).
She also returned to Broadway, earning an Obie Award in 2015 for her role in Annie Baker’s John, set in a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg: the New York Times described the play as a “haunting and haunted meditation on topics [Annie Baker] has made so singularly her own: the omnipresence of loneliness in human life, and the troubled search for love and lasting connection”.
The same year Georgia Engel starred in Chicago in the musical Gotta Dance, about a troupe of pensioners who perform at basketball games. She moved with the show, renamed Half Time, to New Jersey in 2018. Her final role on television was later that year, as a Mother Superior in an episode of the comedy One Day at a Time.
Georgia Engel, who was a devout Christian Scientist, is survived by two sisters.