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Career

After seeing her 1973 film debut in Blume in Love, Neil Simon cast Mason in his Broadway play The Good Doctor.¹ Shortly afterwards, Mason and Simon, a widower, fell in love and got married. That same year, Mason co-starred opposite James Caan in the 20th Century Fox film Cinderella Liberty, which netted her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. In 1977, Mason's performance in Simon's smash hit film, The Goodbye Girl, won her a second Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 1979, Simon successfully cast Mason as Jennie MacLaine in the screen adaptation of his hit play Chapter Two, which was based on Mason's relationship with Simon up to their marriage. The film proved to be another big hit, garnering her a third Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

In 1981, Mason starred along with Kristy McNichol, James Coco, and Joan Hackett in Only When I Laugh, Simon's film adaptation of his Broadway comedy-drama The Gingerbread Lady; it was another box-office success. For her performance as Georgia Hines, Mason was highly praised and earned a fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Mason's Max Dugan Returns (1983), also written by Simon, grossed a modest $17.6 million at the box office. Despite a stellar cast led by Mason, Donald Sutherland, Jason Robards and Matthew Broderick, the film was a slow starter, becoming more popular after premiering on cable TV and VHS. By this time, Mason and Simon had divorced, and her film career lost momentum. She co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge, which was fairly well received and a commercial success. Mason also played a supporting role in the 1990 motion picture Stella starring Bette Midler, a remake of the 1937 film Stella Dallas.

Mason played in a New York production of Harold Pinter's Old Times. She next directed the play Juno's Swans (1986), by E. Katherine Kerr, at the Second Stage Theatre in Los Angeles.²

Her stage credits include Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, Israel Horovitz's The Indian Wants the Bronx, Neil Simon's The Good Doctor and Joseph Papp's 1974 Richard III at the Lincoln Center.³ Mason starred on Broadway in a revival of Night of the Iguana in 1996, and the following year in Michael Cristofer's Amazing Grace. Mason reunited with Goodbye Girl co-star Richard Dreyfuss and writer Neil Simon in Duncan Weldon and Emanuel Azenberg's production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue in 1999, which was performed at the L.A. Theatre Works shortly after a revival in London's West End. She earned a Grammy nomination in comedy.⁴

She appeared in Charles L. Mee's Wintertime at the Second Stage theatre in New York. In August 2005 Mason starred as Hecuba at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and on Broadway in Steel Magnolias, with Delta Burke, Frances Sternhagen, Rebecca Gayheart, Lily Rabe and Christine Ebersole. She appeared in A Feminine Ending at Playwrights Horizons, and in the Shakespeare Theater Company's performance of All's Well That Ends Well in Washington, D.C.⁵ Recently, she starred in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine at Arena Stage in Washington, DC and off-Broadway in the Irish Repertory Theatre's production of "Little Gem" which earned her an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Play.

Mason's television work includes guest roles on Seinfeld, Lipstick Jungle, and Army Wives. Mason starred in her own series, Sibs, which ran from 1991 to 1992. In 1997 and 1998, she had a recurring role on the TV show Frasier as Sherry Dempsey, Martin Crane's flamboyant girlfriend. She received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series. In February 2010, she co-starred in California Suite at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.⁶

Mason played Patricia Heaton's mother in the ABC comedy series The Middle⁷ from 2010 to its conclusion in 2018. Other recent TV roles have included "Grace & Frankie", "Madam Secretary" and "The Good Wife".

In April 2010, Mason co-starred with Keir Dullea and Matt Servitto in an Off-Broadway production of I Never Sang for My Father.⁸ For her performance as Margaret Garrison, Mason received good reviews.⁹¹⁰

During the Pandemic, she appeared in zoom productions of Dear Liar with Brian Cox for Bucks County Playhouse and opposite Richard Dreyfus in "The Letters of Noel Coward" for Bay Street Playhouse in Sag Harbor, NY.

As a director, Mason has helmed productions of Neil Simon's Chapter Two and Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias at the Bucks County Playhouse; the first female version of An Act of God with Paige Davis at Arizona Theatre Company; Juno Stories for Second Stage in NYC; the world premiere of Tennessee Williams' Talisman Roses with Amanda Plummer for the Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, Mass.;¹¹ and a benefit production of The Man Who Came To Dinner starring Walter Bobbie and Brooke Shields for Bucks County Playhouse. Marsha was Associate Director with Jack O'Brien for the Roundabout Theatre's production of All My Sons on Broadway. In 2022, she starred in and co-directed Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers at Hartford Stage.

Mason has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.¹²

She has taught at HB Studio¹³ (Herbert Berghof Studio) in New York City.¹⁴

Personal life

Mason was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 3, 1942, to Jacqueline Helena (Rakowski) and James Joseph Mason, a printer.¹⁵¹⁶ She and her younger sister, Linda, were raised Catholic and grew up in Crestwood. Mason is a graduate of Nerinx Hall High School and Webster University, both in Webster Groves. While at Webster, she performed in a variety of theatrical productions.¹⁷ She raced a Mazda RX-3 in SCCA events.

Mason was married to actor Gary Campbell from 1965 until they divorced in 1970. Her second marriage, to playwright Neil Simon, lasted from 1973 until their 1983 divorce.

A former long-time resident of New Mexico, Mason had a farm¹⁸ in Abiquiu that grew certified organic herbs. In the late 1990s, Mason sold herbs wholesale to companies both locally and regionally before starting a line of wellness and bath and body products called "Resting in the River". Now based in New York City, in 2018 she completed building a home on a hayfield in Litchfield County, Connecticut, where she currently resides.¹⁹²⁰ Mason has frequently visited Eastern countries like India for many decades and has been a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1970.²¹

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

External links

• Marsha Mason at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Marsha Mason at IMDb 
• Marsha Mason at the TCM Movie Database
• Marsha Mason at the Internet Broadway Database
• Marsha Mason at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Marsha Mason Papers at Webster University
• St. Louis Walk of Fame
• "Marsha Mason: A Conversation for Women's History Month", Broadway World, March 29, 2010
• "With: Marsha Mason", American Theatre Wing, March 31, 2010
• "SURVIVAL KIT: MARSHA MASON", WNYC, March 28, 2004

References

1. Marsha Mason Unveils Her. Life With Actress‐Hating Playwright. NY Times, Judy Klemesrud Jan 3, 1978 https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/03/archives/marsha-mason-unveils-her-life-with-actresshating-playwright.html ↩

2. "Marsha Mason Finds Joy In The Work Ethic", The Los Angeles Times, Roderick Mann, February 16, 1986 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-02-16-ca-8480-story.html ↩

3. Marsh Mason Off-Broadway productions http://www.lortel.org/Archives/CreditableEntity/5739 ↩

4. "Marsha Mason". TheaterTimes. Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Retrieved April 30, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20121018032030/http://theatertimes.org/IntermissionMason.html ↩

5. Mason Stars In ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL At Shakespeare Theatre Co. July 27, 2010. http://dc.broadwayworld.com/article/Marsha_Mason_Stars_In_ALLS_WELL_THAT_ENDS_WELL_At_Shakespeare_Theatre_Co_20100727Marsha ↩

6. "Actress Marsha Mason on Neil Simon, young actors, state of theater" Archived June 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, KPCC, February 17, 2010 http://www.scpr.org/news/2010/02/17/Marsha-mason ↩

7. Jacqueline Cutler (April 28, 2010). "Marsha Mason in 'The Middle': Goodbye girl's a grandma". Zap2It. Archived from the original on May 4, 2010. Retrieved May 1, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20100504210135/http://www.zap2it.com/news/zap-marsha-mason-themiddle-story,0,662683.story ↩

8. "Up Close With Keir Dullea and Marsha Mason". The New York Times. February 18, 2010. https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/up-close-with-keir-dullea-and-marsha-mason/?scp=1&sq=Marsha%20Mason&st=cse ↩

9. Ken Jaworowski (April 6, 2010). "That Old Equation: Dad + Son = Clash". The New York Times. https://theater.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/theater/reviews/06never.html?scp=3&sq=Marsha%20Mason&st=cse ↩

10. [1] Archived April 15, 2010, at the Wayback Machine http://www.curtainup.com/ineversangformyfather ↩

11. "Talisman Rose by Tennessee Williams - WORLD PREMIERE". TWPtown.org. Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. Retrieved 14 February 2023. https://www.twptown.org/2018-performances/talisman-roses ↩

12. St. Louis Walk of Fame. "St. Louis Walk of Fame Inductees". stlouiswalkoffame.org. Archived from the original on 31 October 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20121031162946/http://www.stlouiswalkoffame.org/inductees/?view=achievement ↩

13. HB Studio Alumni https://hbstudio.org/about-hb-studio/alumni/ ↩

14. "Mason, Marsha - HB Studio". Hbstudio.org. Retrieved 22 August 2017. https://hbstudio.org/instructors/mason-marsha/ ↩

15. Chambers, Andrea. "Goodbye Girl Marsha Mason Bids Farewell to Neil Simon and Sets Out on a Career as a Director". People.com. Retrieved April 30, 2013. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20090945,00.html ↩

16. Mason, Marsha (27 January 2002). Journey: A Personal Odyssey. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743216852. Retrieved 22 August 2017 – via Google Books. 9780743216852 ↩

17. "Marsha Mason: Theatre Career at Webster University | Webster University". library.webster.edu. Retrieved July 13, 2018. http://library.webster.edu/archives/findingaids/mason/masonwebstertheatre.html ↩

18. See the article, "Marsha Mason's Organic Farm and Estate." http://www.prlog.org/10185917-marsha-masons-organic-farm-and-estate-in-abiquiu-new-mexico-offered-at-7975-million.html ↩

19. See the Article http://www.townvibe.com/Litchfield/September-October-2017/Marsha-MasonA-New-Journey/ ↩

20. "Stage and screen star Marsha Mason relishes 'Rhine' role". Washingtonblade.com. January 26, 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2019. https://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/01/26/stage-screen-star-marsha-mason-relishes-rhine-role/ ↩

21. "Does This Actress's House Deserve an Oscar? (Hint: Yup!)". 13 July 2021. https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/house-interiors/a36717537/marsha-mason-connecticut-house/ ↩