Nancy Walker (May 10, 1922 – March 25, 1992) was an American actress. She was sometimes mistaken for being Jewish (likely due to her having played one of the most famous "Jewish mothers" in film or television history), but she was not Jewish.

Born Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1922 (although some sources have cited 1921 as her year of birth), Walker made her Broadway debut in 1941 in Best Foot Forward. The role would also provide Walker with her film debut when a movie version, starring Lucille Ball, was filmed in 1943. A subsequent appearance was in the MGM musical, Broadway Rhythm in which she had a featured musical number, "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet".

A diminutive 4 feet and 11 inches (1.50 m) tall and not particularly beautiful, she was difficult to cast; however, thanks to her dry comic delivery, she continued acting throughout the 1940s and 1950s and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1955. Dozens of television guest appearances and recurring roles followed, and would provide her with steady work spanning five decades, including comedies, dramas, and variety shows. Nancy co-starred with Phil Silvers in the 1960 musical, Do Re Mi.

She achieved her greatest success playing Ida Morgenstern, the mother of Valerie Harper's Rhoda Morgenstern, initially in a number of guest appearances on Mary Tyler Moore and then as a regular in its spinoff, Rhoda. During much of the time she was costarring in that hit sitcom, she was also a regular on the successful Rock Hudson detective series McMillan and Wife, portraying Mildred the maid. These two roles would bring her seven Emmy Award nominations. She also starrred in two short-lived sitcoms, Blansky's Beauties (an arms-length spin-off of Happy Days), and The Nancy Walker Show, both during the 1976-77 season, giving her the rare distinction of being in two failed series within the same year. She returned to Rhoda (from which she'd departed a year earlier) at the beginning of the 1977-78 season, remaining with the show for the rest of its run. During this time Walker had begun to direct episodic television, including episodes of Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, and the hit sitcom Alice.

One of her last major film roles was as a master criminal posing as the deaf-mute maid Yetta in the 1976 all-star comedy spoof Murder by Death.

Her later years brought her diminished success. She continued to be a regular presence on television, however, playing "Rosie", a New Jersey diner waitress, in a series of commercials for Bounty paper towels from 1970 to 1990. She helped make the product's slogan, "The Quicker Picker Upper", a common catchphrase.

In 1980, she made her feature film directorial debut directing disco group Village People and Olympian Bruce Jenner in the pseudo-autobiographical musical Can't Stop the Music. The film was a critical and box office failure, though it later became something of a camp/cult favorite.

She continued to appear in television guest roles and earned one final Emmy Award nomination in 1987 for a recurring role (as regular Estelle Getty's estranged sister, "Aunt Angela") on the hit NBC TV series The Golden Girls.

Walker was a reformed smoker, but she died from lung cancer at the age of 69 in Studio City, California. At the time of her death, she was costarring in the sitcom True Colors (about an interracial blended family), playing the grandmother.

External links

• http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/w/Nancy%20Walker/nancy_walker.htm

1922 births | 1992 deaths | American television actors | American film actors | American musical theatre actors | People from Philadelphia | Deaths by lung cancer | Entertainers who died in their 60s | Worst Director Razzie Nominee

Nancy Walker