Mariette Hartley

Mariette Hartley
Hartley with Raymond Burr in Kingston: Confidential, 1977.
Born	Mary Loretta Hartley (1940-06-21) June 21, 1940 Weston, Connecticut, United States
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1962–present
Spouse(s)	John Seventa (1960-1962; divorced) Patrick Boyriven (1978-1996; divorced) 2 children

Mary Loretta "Mariette" Hartley (born June 21, 1940) is an American character actress.

Biography

Personal life

Hartley was born in Weston, Connecticut, the daughter of Mary Ickes “Polly” (née Watson), a manager and saleswoman, and Paul Hembree Hartley, an account executive. Her maternal grandfather was psychologist John B. Watson (through Watson’s daughter from his first marriage) and her maternal grandmother was the sister of politician Harold L. Ickes.

In her 1990 autobiography Breaking the Silence, written with Anne Commire, Hartley talked about her struggles with psychological problems, pointing directly at Watson’s practical application of his theories as the source of the dysfunction in his family. She has also spoken in public about her experience of bipolar disorder, and was a founder of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In 2009, Hartley spoke at a suicide and violence prevention forum about her father's suicide.

Career

Hartley began her career in her teens as a stage actress, coached and mentored by the noted Eva Le Gallienne. Her film career began with Ride the High Country (1962), a western with actors Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, and directed by Sam Peckinpah. She also had a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964).

In the 1963-64 television season, she appeared in an episode of ABC’s drama about college life, Channing and in two episodes of The Virginian. In 1966, she appeared as Polly Dockery in the series finale, "A Burying for Rosey", of The Legend of Jesse James.

She worked with Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, two creators of television science fiction. She first appeared in an episode of The Twilight Zone ("The Long Morrow"). In 1969, she appeared in the penultimate episode of Star Trek, "All Our Yesterdays". She appeared in several science fiction films, Marooned (1969), Earth II (1971), and the pilot for the post-apocalyptic Genesis II (1973), another Roddenberry production.

On television, she portrayed Dr. Claire Morton on the primetime adaption of Peyton Place. In 1971, Hartley had a guest appearance with Glenn Corbett on the Gunsmoke episode "Phoenix". In 1978, she appeared in the TV series Logan’s Run (based on the film of the same name) and in The Incredible Hulk in two episodes. As Dr. Carolyn Fields, she marries Bill Bixby's character, the alter ego of the Hulk; for her performance, Hartley won an Emmy Award. Hartley appears in an episode of M*A*S*H as Dr. Inga Halverson (Series 7, Episode 17, "Inga"). She also co-starred with Bixby in the 1983 situation comedy Goodnight, Beantown. She appeared in two episodes of the mystery series Columbo, starring Peter Falk as the rumpled detective. In 1979, she portrayed the Witch in ABC’s holiday telefilm The Halloween That Almost Wasn't (a.k.a. The Night Dracula Saved The World).

In the 1990s, she toured with Elliott Gould and Doug Wert in the revival of the mystery Deathtrap. She hosted the television documentary series Wild About Animals. In 2006, Hartley starred in her own one-woman show, If You Get to Bethlehem, You've Gone Too Far, which ran in Los Angeles.

She played Dorothy Spiller, the mother of Courteney Cox's character on Dirt and is featured as Ceptembre Sage Weller in Shhh ..., a spoof based on The Secret. Hartley has had a recurring role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Lorna Scarry.

Advertising

During the mid-1970s, Hartley was featured in a series of "public service advertisements" produced by the Bell System, the telephone monopoly in the United States. The spots featured Hartley talking of the ease of being able to obtain phone numbers by calling the phone company, but asked that callers recognize that they needed to not abuse the system by calling for a number if that number could be found in the phone book. The ads ended with the tagline, "Look it up, first." At this time, Bell did not charge for providing "directory assistance". The Hartley spots ran less than two years, and soon thereafter the phone company began charging for long directory assistance calls.

Beginning in 1978, Hartley appeared with James Garner in a popular series of television commercials advertising Polaroid cameras. The two actors had such on-screen chemistry that it was often (erroneously) believed that they were married in real life. Her biography contains a photo of her in a T-shirt proclaiming, “I am NOT Mrs. James Garner.” Hartley also guest-starred in a memorable episode of Garner’s TV series The Rockford Files during this period. The script required them to kiss at one point. Unknown to them, a paparazzo was photographing the scene from a distance. The photos were run in a tabloid trying to provoke a scandal, causing a good deal of attention. (An article that ran in TV Guide was titled, “That woman is not James Garner’s wife!”)

Between 2001 and 2006, Hartley endorsed the See Clearly Method, a commercial eye exercise program of which sales were eventually halted by a court which found that it had been marketed dishonestly.

Awards and recognition

• Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for the episode “Married” of The Incredible Hulk (1978)
• Honorary degree, Rider College (1993)

See also

• Photograph of Hartley at All Our Yesterdays

Further reading

• Hartley, Mariette; Commire, Anne. Breaking the Silence, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1990. ISBN 0399135839

External links

• Official website
• Mariette Hartley at IMDb
• Mariette Hartley at Memory Alpha
• Morgan, John; Shoop, Stephen A. "Mariette Hartley triumphs over bipolar disorder", USA Today, 1 August 2003.
• "Mariette Hartley's autobiography and John B. Watson" - article about the children of psychologists Watson and B. F. Skinner