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Veteran actor Priscilla Pointer passed away on April 28th at 100 in the film “Dallas” and the horror classic “Carry.”
“Priscilla Pointer, the acclaimed stage television and film actress, and the mother of David, Katie and Amy Irving, died peacefully in sleep at the age of 100,” announced her actor’s daughter, Amy Irving. Instagram Tuesday. “She’s definitely going to be overlooked.”
Born in New York City on May 18, 1924, Pointer attended Stanford and won the lead in 1948 with “Antigone.” She met her husband, Jules Irving.
The workshop won works by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and many others (the first off-Broadway equity contract awarded outside of NYC in 1955).
Jules Irving was praised as an artistic director and later served in the same function at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center.
Pointer was active on stage throughout the 50s. This includes the first national tour of the “tram named Desire.” She made her Broadway debut in 1965’s “Danton Todd.” This is the first of 13 appearances on The Great White Way, including the 1973 revival of Street Car.
She appeared in the early television series The New Adventures of China Smith in 1954, but in 1969, after a guest spot on “NYPD,” she began her television and film career in earnest. (1975), “Cannon” (1975), “Police Woman” (1976), and “Phylis” (1976).
In 1976, Pointer played the mother of the character of his actual daughter, Amy Irving, in Brian de Palma’s “Carry.” In the unforgettable scene with the late Piper Laurie, the confused character says, “These are Godless times, Mrs. Snell flickers, and replies, ‘I’ll drink it on it.’
She worked with her daughter six more times in “Honeysuckle Rose” (1980), “The Competition” (1980), “Micki + Maude” (1984), “Rumpelstiltskin” (1987), “A Show of Force” (1990), and “Corried Away” (1996).
Some of her other feature films include Nickelodeon (1976), Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977), Onion Field (1979), Mommy Deast (1981), Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Blue Velvet (1986), and Nightmare on Elm Street (1987).
Pointer’s most memorable television performance was Reveggie Cabins Wentworth in over 40 episodes of the nighttime soap “Dallas” (1981-1983). Her character, who attempts to stop the super villain Junior Ewing (Larry Hagman), dies after a plane disaster in a heart-wrenching scene with her TV daughter Victory Apricot Friend.
The principal remembered her Instagram“Priscilla Pointer, my favourite TV Mama & A Wonderful Woman, has passed away today. I would like to express my sincere condolences to Amy Irving and the entire family of Priscilla, always a special place in my heart.
Other late recurring roles on television were via “Call to Glory” (1984-1985), “La Law” (1986-1988), and “The Flash” (1990-1991). She made her final on-screen TV performance in the 2006 episode of “Cold Case,” with her final voice work being in the 2008 TV film “Sweet Nothing In My Ear.”
When Pointer’s first husband died of a heart attack in 1979, she remarried the actor and Lincoln Center’s associate director Robert Simmons the following year. They remained together until his death in 2007.
The memory of her daughter hoped that in death her mother would continue “to escape with her two worshippers and many of her dogs.”
Pointer was survived by her three children and eight grandchildren.
