Piper Laurie (January 22, 1932 – October 14, 2023) was born as Rosetta Jacobs to furniture dealer Alfred Jacobs and his wife Carlotte Sadie Alperin. Both sets of her grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe.
At age 17, she signed a contract with Universal Studios, at that time changing her name to Piper Laurie. She starred with Ronald Reagan in 1950 in Louisa, and claimed to have had her first sexual relationship with the future President of the United States. She acted with Donald O’Connor, Tony Curtis and Rory Calhoun in subsequent films. In 1961, she played the girlfriend of Paul Newman in The Hustler, winning an Academy Award nomination as best actress.
Splitting her career between theater gigs and the movies, she next won movie plaudits and an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress in the 1976 horror film Carrie. A third Oscar nomination came ten years later for her role as Mrs. Norman in Children of a Lesser God. Also in 1986, she won an Emmy for her role in a television movie Promise co-starring James Garner and James Wood.
She married movie critic Joe Morgenstern in 1962, with whom she adopted a daughter, Anne Grace Morgenstern, in 1971. She and Morgenstern divorced in 1982. Laurie liked to sculpt in marble and clay.
Tomorrow, January 23: Frank Lautenberg
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