Actress Alice Ghostley dies at 81

The actress was known to TV audiences as Esmeralda on ‘Bewitched’ and Bernice on ‘Designing Women.’

LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ANGELES — Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning comedic actress and singer who specialized in playing ditsy ladies and was best known on television for her supporting roles as Esmeralda on “Bewitched” and Bernice on “Designing Women,” died Friday. She was 81.

Ghostley died at her home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, said Jim Pinkston, a longtime friend.

Ghostley made her Broadway debut in “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952,” the hit revue in which she received critical acclaim for singing the satirical sendup “The Boston Beguine,” which became her signature song.

“She was just so wonderful,” said Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, who saw “New Faces of 1952” repeatedly and recalls Ghostley singing “The Boston Beguine.”

“There was nothing glamorous about her,” he said. “She was rather plain and had a splendid singing voice, and the combination of the well-trained, splendid singing voice and this kind of dowdy homemaker character was so incongruous and so charming.”

Recognition on stage

Ghostley won the Tony Award for best featured actress in a play in 1965 for “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”

She also received a Tony nomination two years earlier for various characterizations in the 1962-63 Broadway comedy “The Beauty Part” with Bert Lahr.

Although Ghostley was often compared to Paul Lynde, one of her “New Faces” co-stars, Ballard said Ghostley “was completely original. If anyone was influenced, it was Paul who was influenced by Alice.”

Ghostley last appeared on Broadway in “Annie,“ taking over the role of Miss Hannigan, the wicked orphanage supervisor, in 1978 and playing the part until 1983.

But during her long show-business career, she regularly moved between the stage, cabaret, movies and television.

On “Bewitched,” she played the timid good witch Esmeralda, the housekeeper, from 1969 to 1972. And from 1987 to 1993, she played Bernice Clifton on “Designing Women,” a role that earned her an Emmy nomination for supporting actress in a comedy in 1992.

Among Ghostley’s film credits are “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Graduate,” “Gator” and “Grease.”

Early years

She was born Aug. 14, 1926, in the train station in Eve, Mo., where her father worked as a telegraph operator, and she grew up in Henryetta, Okla.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother took me to the Legion Hut and stood me on a table,” she told The Boston Globe in 1990. “I recited poetry! I sang songs! I tap-danced! I didn’t know it then, but that table was my first stage. There was applause.”

After graduating from high school, Ghostley attended the University of Oklahoma but quit to move to New York with her sister Gladys.

Ghostley was known for her cabaret appearances as a singer and comedian before she was cast in “New Faces of 1952.”

When she first arrived in New York, she recalled in The Boston Globe interview, she couldn’t afford to take singing lessons, so she worked as a secretary to a music teacher for free in exchange for lessons.

Ghostley, whose husband, actor Felice, died in 2003, is survived by her sister.