Star of Broadway stage liked TV work best
Nanette Fabray, whose enthusiastic charm, wide smile and diverse talents made her a Tony Awardwinning performer in the 1940s and an Emmy Awardwinning comic actress in the 1950s, died Thursday at her home in Palos Verdes, California. She was 97.
Fabray was 28 when she received the Tony for best actress in a musical for her performance in ‘‘Love Life,’’ a collection of sketches. It was her seventh Broadway show and followed her success in Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s ‘‘High Button Shoes’’ the season before.
In 1956, she won two Emmy Awards, as best comedienne and best actress in a supporting role, for her work on ‘‘Caesar’s Hour,’’ the follow-up to ‘‘Your Show of Shows,’’ in which Sid Caesar had starred with Imogene Coca.
The next year, Fabray won another Emmy for the series, 10 months after she had been dismissed by the producers in a contract dispute.
Fabray nearly gave her life for the show. In 1955, she was hospitalized for almost two weeks after being knocked unconscious by a falling pipe backstage.
Fabray had one notable film success, in the musical ‘‘The Band Wagon’’ (1953), directed by Vincente Minnelli. The film included the number ‘‘Triplets,’’ in which she, Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan played infants, with adult-size heads and torsos but short, stubby baby legs.
Ruby Nanette Bernadette Theresa Fabares (she eventually changed the spelling of her last name after too many public mispronouncements) was born in San Diego. Her family soon moved to Los Angeles, where Nanette began working in vaudeville at age 4.
As a student, Fabray had difficulties because of an undiagnosed hearing problem. The problem was eventually corrected by surgery, and she became an advocate for the hearing-impaired.
Although she continued to work on Broadway after her Tony win, Fabray began concentrating on television.
After the Caesar show, Fabray attempted a sitcom of her own, but ‘‘The Nanette Fabray Show’’ (1961) lasted less than a season. She went on to four decades of TV movies and guest appearances on series, including ‘‘Love, American Style,’’ ‘‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’’ (as Moore’s mother), ‘‘One Day at a Time’’ (as Bonnie Franklin’s mother) and the 1990s sitcom ‘‘Coach,’’ on which she played the mother of her real-life niece Shelley Fabares.
Back on the New York stage in 1963, she received a Tony nomination for her role as a fictional first lady in ‘‘Mr. President,’’ Irving Berlin’s last Broadway show.
But live television was her first love. ‘‘It involves a form of insanity that reminds me of make-believe games that you played as a child,” she said in 1955.
Fabray’s second husband, screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, died in 1973. She is survived by their son, Dr. Jamie MacDougall, and two grandchildren.