Louise Lasser, the deadpan comedian who became a 1970s cult icon as a pigtailed Ohio housewife on the show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, died Monday at her home in New York City. She was 87.
Born in Manhattan in 1939 and raised in the Bronx, Lasser dropped out of college during her senior year to study acting with the legendary Sanford Meisner. She made her Broadway debut in 1962 understudying for a 20-year-old Barbra Streisand in I Can Get It for You Wholesale — and briefly took over the role when Streisand left. That same year, she met Woody Allen on a double date. They married in 1966 and divorced four years later, but their friendship outlasted the marriage.
She appeared in five of his films, including Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.
The New York Times described her as “somehow simultaneously neurotic and girlish” — a quality that made her a perfect foil for Allen’s frenetic on-screen persona.
Her original defining role came in 1976 when Norman Lear cast her as Mary Hartman, a housewife on the edge of a nervous breakdown in a small Ohio town. The show aired five nights a week in syndication and ran 325 episodes across two seasons, becoming one of the most original things on American television. It earned Lasser an Emmy nomination and put her face on the covers of “Newsweek,” “People,” and “Rolling Stone” simultaneously.
That same year, she was arrested for cocaine possession. Still, she kept working for decades while also teaching acting in New York and running her own studio on the Upper East Side.
She is survived by her longtime partner, Michael Citriniti.