Lois Nettleton

Lois Nettleton, a Daytime Emmy-winning actress who had a long career on Broadway and television, died Jan. 18 of lung cancer. She was 80. Nettleton died at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital, publicist Dale Olson said Tuesday. Born Aug. 16, 1927, in Oak Park, Illinois, Nettleton was Miss Chicago 1948 and a Miss America semifinalist. She studied theater in Chicago after high school and then moved to New York, where she joined the Actors Studio. She made her Broadway debut in 1949 in "The Biggest Thief in Town." She later appeared in many other plays, both on Broadway and elsewhere, including a co-starring role with Burt Reynolds in a Chicago performance of "The Rainmaker." On stage, she also played Blanche in the 1973 Lincoln Center revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire." Her first movie role was a bit part in Elia Kazan's 1957 "A Face in the Crowd." She appeared in about two dozen movies and appeared on TV shows ranging from "In the Heat of the Night" to "Crossing Jordan" and "Seinfeld." One of her best-remembered TV roles was Norma in a 1961 doomsday episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "The Midnight Sun." She also had a three-year role as Virginia Benson on the soap opera "General Hospital." Nettleton won two Daytime Emmys for her work on the 1977 special "The American Woman: Profiles in Courage," and a 1983 episode of the syndicated religious anthology "Insight."