The title of playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s 1977 off-Broadway hit, “Uncommon Women and Others,” accurately described the roles which brought original cast member Swoosie Kurtz two Tonys, one Emmy – and universal renown as a character actress par excellence. In the years since she first caught theatergoers’ attention with her quirkily endearing performance as a sex-obsessed Mount Holyoke graduate in Wasserstein’s semi-autobiographical ensemble drama, the petite redhead – named after a Boeing B-17 bomber – demonstrated her formidable range on stage, screen, and television. Not many actresses could have played both a grieving mother, confronting her daughter’s killer, and a one-eyed, agoraphobic ex-synchronized swimmer with equal conviction, as Kurtz did in Broadway’s “Frozen” (2004) and ABC’s “Pushing Daisies” (2007- ) respectively. Even when she slummed by taking recurring roles in banal sitcoms like “Suddenly Susan” (NBC, 1996-2000) and “Still Standing”(CBS, 2002-06), Kurtz maintained her reputation as a critic’s darling. Yet the actress, whose five year-run on the soapy NBC primetime drama “Sisters” (1991-96) netted Kurtz two of her 10 Emmy nominations to date, never shied away from taking roles that “pay the bills”—and which also allow her to return to her first and most enduring love: theater.
It was Kurtz’s father who bestowed (or saddled) his only child with her distinctive first name. The Air Force’s most decorated bomber pilot in World War II, Colonel Frank Kurtz Jr. flew the B-17 Flying Fortress, nicknamed the “Swoose,” because its unusual design evoked Kay Kyser’s big band hit “Alexander the Swoose,” about a half-swan, half-goose. So when Kurtz’s wife Margot gave birth to a baby girl in a Omaha, NE hospital on Sept. 6, 1944, she was christened Swoosie (rhymes with Lucy) to commemorate her father’s beloved bomber.
Of course, having such an odd and invariably mispronounced name did not make being the perpetual “new kid” in school any easier for Kurtz, a military brat who attended 17 schools before enrolling in the University of Southern California as a drama major. Shy and introspective by nature – she once told an interviewer she suffered from “life fright” – Kurtz felt liberated onstage. She continued her studies at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where she took classes in voice, diction, and movement for two years before returning home to jump-start her New York stage career.
At least that was Kurtz’s dream. Making it a reality proved to be a discouraging experience for the actress, who watched as graduates from Juilliard and the Yale Drama School seemingly grabbed all the best roles. She, on the other hand, was just another struggling unknown, resigned to going on cattle calls. Granted, she did regional theater and the occasional television role – most notably the 1976 PBS “Great Performances” telecast of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” However, the plum Broadway roles continued to elude her.
Fortunately, Kurtz’s singular talent eventually won her a supporting role in the 1977 Circle in the Square Theater revival of Moliere’s “Tartuffe.” Sharing the stage with John Wood, Mildred Dunnock, and Tammy Grimes, Kurtz wowed the critics with her splendid performance, earning the first of her five Tony nominations, for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Next came her breakout, Obie Award-winning performance in “Uncommon Women and Others,” followed by a Drama Desk Award winning performance in Christopher Durang’s musical comedy, “A History of American Film.”
At the age of 33, the self-described “late bloomer” finally began working steadily – not just onstage, but in film and television as well, albeit with wildly mixed results. In 1978, Kurtz, along with fellow newcomers Michael Keaton and David Letterman, joined the cast of Mary Tyler Moore’s highly touted CBS variety series, “Mary” (1978), which got the axe after three episodes. Nor did Kurtz fare much better in her early big screen roles. She briefly enlivened “Oliver Story” (1978), the critically reviled sequel to “Love Story” (1970), but her part was essentially a glorified walk-on. Only when she reprised her stage role in the 1978 PBS “Great Performances” adaptation of “Uncommon Women and Others,” co-starring Meryl Streep and Jill Eikenberry, did Kurtz finally get the opportunity to shine on screen.
While Hollywood may not have immediately seen Kurtz’s star potential, it was a vastly different story on Broadway, where she scored the stage equivalent of a triple home run in 1981 for her seriocomic, tour-de-force performance in Lanford Wilson’s “The Fifth of July.” As Gwen, an eccentric, foul-mouthed, pill-popping heiress/wannabe rock singer, Kurtz won the Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play, the Drama Desk Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award. The role marked the proverbial turning point in Kurtz’s career, both artistically and commercially. Whereas a lesser actress might resorted to kooky shtick, making Gwen a brassy, larger-than-life figure, Kurtz skillfully revealed the pathos and essential decency lurking just beneath the character’s extroverted façade.
Her gift for humanizing eccentric, borderline freakish characters became Kurtz’s calling card – and caught Hollywood’s attention. She would return to series television, co-starring in Tony Randall’s short-lived sitcom “Love, Sidney” (NBC, 1981-83), and won raves for her brief role as a no-nonsense hooker deflowering Robin Williams’ title character in “The World According to Garp” (1982). Despite her growing list of film and television credits, however, Kurtz remained very much a creature of the stage. In 1986, she won her second Tony Award for her alternately heartbreaking and hilarious performance as the aptly named Bananas, a mentally unstable housewife, in the Broadway revival of John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves.” Over the next few years, the workaholic actress would headline plays by Guare, Terrence McNally, and Paula Vogel between film and television roles. In 1988, she more than held her own opposite Glenn Close and John Malkovich in Stephen Frears’ brilliant film version of “Dangerous Liaisons.” And two years later, Kurtz’s guest spot on Carol Burnett’s “Carol & Company” (NBC, 1990-91) won her the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Although Kurtz did not achieve above-the-title film stardom like her fellow New York theater veterans Streep and Close, she nevertheless became a television favorite, due largely to her role on the hit NBC series “Sisters.” As Alex, the eldest of the four Halsey sisters, Kurtz brought emotional depth and flashes of astringent wit to a character who skirted the edge of caricature: a snooty Midwestern matron married to a cross-dressing plastic surgeon. Eleven years after “Sisters’ ended its network run in 1996, Kurtz once again returned to the small screen as a series regular on “Pushing Daisies” – fresh from receiving her fifth Tony nomination for the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.”