Marsha Mason

Despite being born to a strict Catholic family outside of St. Louis, she fell in love with the theater after taking courses at her local commuter college. After a rocky start, she soon became a household name.

Yet she only appeared in a handful of films, where she gave award winning performances in both comic and dramatic performances: Cinderella Liberty, The Goodbye Girl, The Cheap Detective, Promises in the Dark, Chapter Two, Only When I Laugh, Heartbreak Ridge, Stella, and as Sherry in the situation comedy Frasier.

Always quiet about her personal life, she was married to Neil Simon for 10 years. She currently remains a resident of New Mexico, Connecticut, and NYC.

Let's discuss the American actress Marsha Mason.

Ms. Mason showing off her home

She always comes off as graceful and classy, yet very down to Earth.

Love her. Always have. She was a leading lady at ACT in San Francisco when I was a kid - got to see her when I was a wee one. The best.

Blume in Love and Cinderella Liberty were two Marsha Mason released in 1973. Coincidentally Eric Porter also had two films released in 1973, Hitler: The Last Ten Days and The Day of the Jackal.

R3 Agree! Whether it is a dramatic heavy or comic lights, she can always be counted upon.

Love her. So great in The Goodbye Girl.

Dependable, versatile, could handle heavy drama and comedy....however....

Mason was similar to her contemporary, Jill Clayburgh. Both were appealing performers who somehow lacked both the gravitas and glamour of more traditional A-list Hollywood leads, even as both of them were starring in hit movies.

Compare and contrast them with, say, Jane Fonda or Faye Dunaway during the same period. Or Streisand, for that matter.

It's kind of shocking that someone who appears to be as nice as Marsha was married to Neil Simon, a genuinely unpleasant narcissist. (Rumor was that his last wife, Elaine Joyce was a much better match for Simon re: personality and temperament.)

I never found her particularly appealing.

R10 I always thought Mason and Clayburgh were above Hollywood. More "New England" if you get my drift.

Her best friend is Jack O'Brien, who writes lovingly of her in his second book, "Jack Be Nimble." They met over 50 years ago in San Francisco when she was acting for a season with the American Conservatory Theater.

She comes across s a total mensch, unlike Neil, who abruptly fired O'Brien (while Mason was weeping in another room) in a brutal scene that makes Simon's letter to MTM look like a love note. "I could sense his almost titanic rage. ... I had the distinct feeling that I was lying at the bottom of Poe's 'Pit and the Pendulum, with Neil's distorted face above me, the blade coming ever slower, ever lower."

Photo from a couple of months ago at the opening of "Shucked."

Love her as Sherry in Frasier. A perfect foil to Niles and Frasier

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