† Julie Harris (1925–2013)

Julie Harris is the most honored performer in Tony history with ten nominations and six awards. She won the award as Best Actress for I Am A Camera in 1952, for The Lark in 1956, for Forty Carats in 1969, and for The Last of Mrs. Lincoln in 1973. In 1977 she won Best Actress in a play for The Belle of Amherst. Her five additional nominations were for: Best Dramatic Actress in Marathon ’33 in 1964 and The Au Pair Man in 1974; Best Actress in a musical in Skyscraper in 1966; and Best Actress in a play in Lucifer’s Child in 1991, and The Gin Game in 1997. Ms. Harris and producer Robert Whitehead were named the recipients of Special Tony Awards for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater in May of 2002. Elia Kazan, in his autobiography A Life, said that he was grateful to have Julie Harris on the set of East of Eden because of her calming influence on James Dean. Kazan praised Harris as both an actress and as a human being. Ms. Harris attended drama school at Yale, and made her stage debut in It’s a Gift in 1945. She made her screen debut in 1952’s The Member of the Wedding, in a reprise of her Broadway role. She earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a young girl prodded into maturity by events at home. Since then Harris has won some twenty awards for her work on stage, screen, and TV. Prior to her death she lived on Cape Cod and often attended Elements Theatre Company productions and became a fan of Priory Gift Shop.