Maryclaire Costello, a lifelong member of The Actors Studio who recurred as teacher Rosemary Hunter in And Tunisia She played the role of a hippie vampire in the horror film Let’s scare Jessica to deathShe died on April 17 in Brooklyn, her family announced. She was 90 years old.
A native of Illinois, Costello was an original member of the Lincoln Center Repertory Company, and has appeared four times on Broadway, including a 1970 revival of the play. Harvey Which starred Jimmy Stewart and Helen Hayes.
In 1974, she played Martin Sheen’s wife in the Emmy Award-winning ABC television movie. Execution of the Slovak soldier.
She was married to actor Alan Arbus, who played pioneering psychiatrist Sidney Friedman on the CBS hit. mashFrom 1977 until his death in 2013 at the age of 95. (His first wife was photographer Diane Arbus.)
Costello appeared as Rosemary in 15 episodes of the CBS series. And Tunisia During its first five seasons (1972-1977). Her character, the first to read one of John Boy’s (Richard Thomas) stories at Walton Mountain School, ends up marrying Reverend Matthew Fordwick (John Ritter) in the show’s fourth season opener in September 1975.
“I had a wonderful time with Richard Thomas and John Ritter,” she recalled in a 2011 interview. “We laughed from start to finish of the day. We spent a lot of time together. They were great.”
Costello noted that when she told the producers she was pregnant, they wrote it into the show, and baby Arin was featured as Rosemary’s daughter, Mary Margaret, in season five.
She left the series to star in the role of the mother in the CBS drama 1977-1978 The Fitzpatricksa drama about a family with four children (one of whom is played by Jimmy MacNicol) living in Flint, Michigan. But the show only lasted 13 episodes.
in Let’s scare Jessica to death (1971), directed by John D. Hancock, Costello was charming as Emily Bishop, the vampire ghost who terrorizes her mentally unstable friend Jessica (Zahra Lambert). She rises from the lake in her wedding dress in what is perhaps the most memorable scene of her life.
Maryclair Catherine Costello, the youngest of three sisters, was born on February 3, 1936 in Peoria, Illinois. Her mother, Margaret, was secretary to the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives in Peoria and Springfield, and her father, Dallas, was a civil engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Costello attended St. Mark’s School and Our Lady’s Academy in Peoria and went to all-girls Clark College in Dubuque, Iowa, spending time at the University of Vienna during her junior year.
She earned a master’s degree in theater and education from Catholic University in Washington, where she studied improvisation with Viola Spolin and performed the role of Nerissa opposite President Kennedy in a production of the play. Merchant of Venice.
Of the hundreds of actors who auditioned, she was one of only 30 in 1964 chosen for the original Lincoln Center Repertory Company, led by Herbert Blau and Jules Irving. That year, she played Elia Kazan’s Louise in Arthur Miller’s film After fallingStarring Jason Robards and Barbara Lowden.
Costello also worked at the Sheridan Square Theater and the Public Theater and made her Broadway debut in 1965 alongside Stacy Keach in a revival of Country wifefollowed by 1968 Lovers and other strangers1969 Homeland for me And then HarveyWhere she played the role of psychiatric hospital nurse Ruth.
Along the way, she trained and worked with the likes of Jerome Robbins, James Earl Jones, José Quintero, Hal Holbrook, Austin Pendleton, and Faye Dunaway.
While still attached to And TunisiaCostello recurred on the 1976 CBS drama pleasantwhich starred Brenda Vaccaro as a teacher in a one-room Colorado schoolhouse in the 1870s (canceled after 12 episodes).
Her resume also included films Ordinary people (1980) and The adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the eighth dimension (1984), a 1976 NBC miniseries Raid on Entebbe (Her husband was in it too) He worked in television Ironside, Kojak, Harry O, Lou Grant, Murder, she wrote, Chicago Hope, Judging Amy and Providence.
She and Arbus first met in Mira Rostova’s acting class, and fell in love with each other while rehearsing Dorothy Parker’s one-act play. We are here. They moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and married at home after 12 years together.
Costello led the drama program at St. Paul the Apostle Elementary School in Westwood and directed plays at Loyola High School and Loyola Marymount University, where she also taught acting for many years.
She has also directed productions for Interact Theater and led a theater group at Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation and reentry program. Her basement was filled “from floor to ceiling with costumes and props, and her productions were works of extraordinary care and beauty,” her family said.
They added: “She was also, in every dimension of her life, a caring person. She could talk to anyone, was interested in everything and asked questions relentlessly. She loved stray animals, rescued insects, fed birds, and knew that few pleasures in life were quite as good as finding good furniture curbside. She was a wonderful cook and wrapped gifts with the kind of care that made unwrapping an event of her own. She polished countless floors and collected objects, letters and pictures.” Photography, she even used coffee cups, much to the dismay of her husband and daughter. She made every space she inhabited more beautiful. She was warm, curious, generous, strong, had an ox-like body, was never sick and was always ready for an adventure, especially if she could show up a few minutes late, as was her general tendency.
Survivors include her daughter, Aryn, and her partner, Ethan. Bird’s granddaughter; stepdaughters Amy and Dawn; nieces Moira, Elizabeth, Molly, Sarah, Kate and Julia; and my nephew Jim.
Funeral services will be held in New York, and burial and remembrance are scheduled to take place in Peoria.
