NEW YORK — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original “Cape Fear” and the first woman president in “Kisses for My President,” died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.
NEW YORK — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original “Cape Fear” and the first woman president in “Kisses for My President,” died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.
Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, surrounded by family and close friends.
A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas.
In recent years, she played Felicity Huffman’s mother on “Desperate Housewives” and the past mistress of Tony Soprano’s late father on “The Sopranos.”
Bergen won an Emmy in 1958 portraying the tragic singer Helen Morgan on the famed anthology series “Playhouse 90.” She was nominated for another Emmy in 1989 for best supporting actress in a miniseries or special for “War and Remembrance.”
Talking to women in a business group in 1968, she said her definition of success was “when you feel what you’ve done fulfills yourself, makes you happy and makes people around you happy.”