Bookends at the Booth, Barbara Barrie of Company Dies at 95

Barbara Barrie, the actress who originated Sarah in Stephen Sondheim's Company and earned an Oscar nomination for Breaking Away, died on October 28 at 95, Playbill reports.

The Booth Theatre on West 45th Street has a show in previews this week. It also has a claim on her. Barrie made her Broadway debut there in 1955, in a play called The Wooden Dish. She took her last Broadway bow there in 2017, in Joshua Harmon's Significant Other.

By Suite 646's count, that is 62 years between the first entrance and the last, on the same stage.

How Did She Die?

Playbill reports that her daughter, Jane Harnick, said the death was medically assisted and chosen after a terminal cancer diagnosis. Barrie had spoken publicly in 2014 about idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease.

She was no stranger to talking about illness in public. After treatment for rectal cancer in 1994, she wrote two memoirs about it, Second Act and Don't Die of Embarrassment, and pushed hard for early screening.

Who Was Sarah in Company?

Sarah is the dieting food lover locked in a combative marriage with Harry, a husband who drinks, as Playbill describes the role. Barrie created the role in 1970 at the Alvin Theatre, the house on West 52nd Street now called the Neil Simon. Elaine Stritch was in the same company. Company won the Tony for best musical, and Barrie was nominated for best featured actress in a musical, as BroadwayWorld notes.

It was the only Tony nomination of a long career. It was not the only time Manhattan marriages paid her rent.

Sixty-two years between the first entrance and the last, on the same stage.

A New Yorker From Corpus Christi

She was born Barbara Ann Berman in Chicago on May 23, 1931, and grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, according to her Wikipedia biography. She took a drama degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1952 and came straight to New York.

The early work was serious. She played Elizabeth Proctor in an Off-Broadway Crucible in 1958, then Viola in Twelfth Night for Joseph Papp at the Delacorte in 1969. In 1974 she won both an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for The Killdeer at the Public.

Neil Simon kept calling. She took over Edna Edison in The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1971 and played two roles in California Suite in 1976, both at the Eugene O'Neill on West 49th. In 1983 she took over Mrs. Beckoff, the mother in Torch Song Trilogy, from Estelle Getty.

The Screen Years

Her first film, One Potato, Two Potato, won her the best actress prize at Cannes in 1964. In 1979 she played Evelyn Stohler, the patient mother in Breaking Away, and was nominated for the Academy Award for best supporting actress.

Television knew her as Elizabeth, the wife of Hal Linden's title character on Barney Miller, in 37 episodes from 1975 to 1978. She was later Emmy-nominated for guest roles on Law & Order and Law & Order Special Victims Unit, BroadwayWorld notes.

The list runs long. She played opposite a young Robert Duvall in a 1963 Twilight Zone episode, Mamie Eisenhower in the 1979 miniseries Backstairs at the White House, and Harriet Benjamin in the film Private Benjamin, a part she carried into the 1981 television series. Later came Suddenly Susan, Once and Again, Nurse Jackie and Enlightened. New York kept her busy, and so did everyone else.

A Career in One Paragraph

Here is the arc, from her Wikipedia stage credits, in Suite 646's arithmetic. Ten Broadway engagements across 62 years. Three of them at the O'Neill. Two at the Booth, the first and the last. One Tony nomination, for Company in 1971. One Oscar nomination, for Breaking Away. One best actress prize at Cannes, in 1964.

Who Survives Her?

Her husband, the director and producer Jay Harnick, founder of Theatreworks USA and brother of the lyricist Sheldon Harnick, died in 2007. They married in 1964. Playbill reports she is survived by her children, Jane and Aaron, and three granddaughters.

Downstate is playing the Booth now, as we reported when previews began. For another night when Company's first generation came back into the room, see Elaine Stritch winning a 30 Rock fan vote at Radio City.

Somewhere on West 45th Street there is a stage she crossed twice, 62 years apart. Tonight someone else walks it, and the house lights still go down.