Hope Lange

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Hope Elise Ross Lange (November 28, 1933December 19, 2003) was an American stage, film, and television actress.

She was born into a theatrical family in Redding Ridge, Connecticut. Her father, John George Lange, was the music arranger for Florenz Ziegfeld and a conductor for Henry Cohen. Her mother, Minnette Lange, was an actress before becoming a restaurant owner.

In 1943, Lange made her Broadway debut in The Patriots.

Following her father’s passing, she worked as a waitress in her mother’s Greenwich Village restaurant. She sometimes walked the dog of former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a nearby apartment. When her photo appeared in the newspaper, she received an offer to work as a New York City advertising model. That eventually led to a return to acting in the early 1950s, when she began working in television.

Lange came to prominence in her first film role, in Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray whom she married on April 14, 1956. As a result of favorable reviews, she landed a major role in the then risqué 1957 film, Peyton Place. Her strong performance earned her a nomination for a Golden Globe Award and another for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Divorced from Don Murray, with whom she had two children, she left acting after her October 19, 1963 marriage to producer-director Alan J. Pakula. Shortly before divorcing Pakula in 1971, she resumed her career, starring from 1968 to 1970 in the popular TV series, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir for which she earned two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award nomination. This success was followed by three seasons on The New Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1977, she returned to the Broadway stage where her acting career had originally begun.

In 1986, she married theatrical producer Charles Hollerith, with whom she remained the rest of her life. She died on December 19, 2003, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, as a result of an ischemic colitis infection at the age of 70.

Lange's two children with Don Murray are actor Christopher Murray and photographer Patricia Murray.

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