Dixie Carter

In 1996, Carter published her memoirs, entitled Trying to Get to Heaven. "When I'm 85 I fully intend to be the little old lady in the wheelchair in A Little Night Music!" she says. They live in Beverly Hills, California. She vows she will never retire. Two years later, she divorced Hearn and married again to actor Hal Holbrook, who is most noted for his appearances as Mark Twain. Peil also played Edith Davis, Nancy Reagan's mother, in the Showtime movie The Reagans. She divorced Arthur Carter in 1977 and married actor Gene Hearn. Dawson's Creek, which ran from 1998 to 2003, was her first series.

She is known for her Southern pride, which is evident in her product endorsements, like her appearance in commercials for Southern Bell (later BellSouth). She was 64 by her first television appearance, guesting on Law and Order in 1994. She also starred in several musicals and plays on Broadway. She made her film debut in her 60s in 1992's Jersey Girl. From 1999 to 2002, she portrayed brash Southern attorney Randi King on the series Family Law. Her work has largely been confined to the stage. However, she is best known for appearing as outspoken Julia Sugarbaker in the 1980s television program Designing Women, set in Atlanta. In the winter of 2003, she again appeared on the New York stage, starring in Keith Reddin's play about the Kennedy assasination, Frame 312..

Carter first became famous for her role as Brandy Henderson on the soap opera The Edge of Night. She played the beggar woman in Sweeny Todd at the Kennedy Center in 2002 and in the spring of 2003 she played Antonio Banderas's mother in the musical Nine. She returned to acting at age 35. In May 1999, she appeared in the Yale Repertory Theatre's production of the Noel Coward play Hay Fever. In 1967 she married businessman Arthur Carter, with whom she had two daughters. Following the birth of her daughters, she left acting for eight years to focus on raising her children. She played evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in a revival of Irving Berlin and Moss Hart's As Thousand Cheer, offering what critics called a "sizzling" rendition of the song "Heat Wave". She moved to New York in 1963 and got a part in a production of A Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. Gurney's Sylvia with Charles Kimbrough and Stephanie Zimbalist.

In 1960, Carter made her professional stage debut in a Memphis production of Carousel. In 1996 and 1997, she toured in A.R. She is a graduate of Memphis State (now University of Memphis) with a degree in English. She won an Obie award in 1995 for her work in three plays: The Naked Truth, Missing Persons, and A Cheever Evening. She attended college at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College). Some critics said she was better than Gertrude Lawrence, who originated the role, and was nominated in 1985 for a Tony for best featured actress in a musical. Carter was born in McLemoresville, Tennessee and spent many of her early years in Memphis, Tennessee. In May 1983 she was cast as the twelfth Anna Leonowens to Yul Brynner's King of Siam in the revival of The King and I.

Dixie Virginia Carter (born May 25, 1939) is an American actress noted for her portrayal of Southern women. She soon found herself on Broadway. She was persuaded to take a part in Kiss Me, Kate and to her surprise found she loved doing musical theatre. In 1971, she originated the role of Alma in the opera Summer and Smoke, based on a Tennessee Williams play, and performed it again when it was broadcast on television. She also sang with the New York City Opera.

In the 1960s, the soprano toured with Boris Goldovsky's opera company and the Metropolitan Opera's national company singing such roles as Susannah in Mozart and da Ponte's The Marriage of Figaro. Born in Davenport, Iowa, Mary Beth Peil--her surname is pronounced PALE--trained as an opera singer at Northwestern University under Lotte Lehmann. Mary Beth Peil (born June 25, 1930) is an American opera singer and actress best known as Evelyn Ryan on the television series Dawson's Creek. 57.

pg. June 18, 1996. "The bold soprano: After leaving opera for stage, Mary Beth Peil gets `Naked'." Boston Globe. Richard Dyer.