Tony-Winning ‘Death Of A Salesman’ Star Was 84

Elizabeth Franz, the Tony-winning and Emmy-nominated Death of a Salesman actress whose performance was lauded by the seminal playwright Arthur Miller himself, has died at the age of 84.

She died November 4 at her home in Woodbury, CT, as a result of cancer and a severe reaction to her treatment medication, her husband Christopher Pelham told the New York Times.

The veteran performer was prolific and nimble on the stage, appearing in a number of plays on and off Broadway including as the titular nun in Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (for which she won an Obie Award in 1982), as Matthew Broderick’s on-stage mother in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (for which she was Tony nominated in 1983), and as the youngest of four sisters in a Midwestern family in Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven (for which she logged another Tony nomination in 2002).

Her most memorable role, however, was her subversive take on wife Linda Loman in Broadway’s 1999 Death of a Salesman production opposite Brian Dennehy’s melancholic traveling salesman Willy Loman. Franz opted to portray the character more assertively than other actresses had done in the past, a decision that led Miller to tell the Times that she “has discovered in the role the basic underlying powerful protectiveness, which comes out as fury, and that in the past, in every performance I know of, was simply washed out.” She subsequently won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Franz reprised the role for Showtime’s television adaptation of the watershed play in 2000, receiving an Emmy nod for her performance.

She told the Times her performance as Linda was inspired by her father’s experiences as a blue collar worker; the factory employee, who had given nearly four decades of his life to his job, was fired after an illness has kept him away from work for a couple of months. He died the day he paid off his mortgage, which informed the parallels she saw between him and Willy. “It killed my father, really,” she told New Jersey publication The Star-Ledger in 1999, referring to his firing. “He didn’t commit suicide, like Willy. He didn’t have to.”

Additional roles on Broadway included productions of The Cherry Orchard, Getting Married, Uncle Vanya and The Miracle Worker.

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In film, Franz’s credits include School Ties (1992), Sabrina (1995), The Substance of Fire (1996) and Christmas with the Kranks (2004). On television, she appeared in episodes of Roseanne, The Equalizer, Judging Amy, Law & Order, Homeland, Gilmore Girls and Grey’s Anatomy, as well as in soaps like Another World and As the World Turns.

Born June 18, 1941 in Akron, OH, she was inspired to become an actress after seeing Loretta Young in The Bishop’s Wife (1947). She worked as a secretary after graduating high school to raise funds for her enrollment at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She graduated in 1962 and soon afterward began performing in local theaters including in her hometown.

Franz married her first husband, character actor Edward Binns, with whom she often collaborated on stage, in 1983. He died in 1990.

She is survived by Pelham, a screenwriter; and her brother Joe.