Mary Kay Place (born September 23, 1947 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) is an American actress and singer. As graduate of University of Tulsa with a Speech Degree, she moved to Hollywood with aspirations of becoming an actress and writer. She was hired for 1970s The Tim Conway Comedy Hour as a production assistant to both star Conway and producer Norman Lear. It was Conway who gave her her first on-camera break, while it was Lear who saw to it that Place received her first writing credit on his subsequent All in the Family. Her appearance on this show as one of Gloria's buddies is quite memorable because she sang “If Communism Comes Knocking on Your Door, Don't Answer It.”
Lear then cast her in the role of would-be C&W star Loretta Haggers on the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77). She won an Emmy Award for her work as Loretta, and was later nominated for a Grammy Award for her spin-off musical album Tonite! At the Capri Lounge Loretta Haggers. Place wrote two of the songs on Tonite!, “Vitamin L” and “Baby Boy.” Both showed that she knew how to capitalize on the character's personality and comic effects. “Vitamin L” is “love you see, and without it, well, it's hell.” (Pronounced “hayull”) “Baby Boy,” which charted on country radio, told the story of Loretta and Charlie Haggers (played by Graham Jarvis). The couple was forever trying to conceive (the joke being that she was half his age and the sex was non-stop). “Baby Boy” was mythical in that she announced “I just found out today that our baby's on the way.”
Both albums featured A-list country and pop performers from the 1970's. Dolly Parton, on whom the Loretta character was loosely based, provided backing vocals as well as the song “All I Can Do.” Emmylou Harris, Anne Murray and Nicolette Larson sang back up as well. Aimin' to Please's “Something to Brag About” was a duet with Willie Nelson and charted for the pair in 1977.
Mary Hartman was one of the biggest cult television programs of all time. The show centered around the sex-crazed Haggers and the almost sexless Mary (Louise Lasser) and Tom Hartman (Greg Mullavey). Mary was Loretta's best friend and Tom was Charlie's best friend. Tom and Charlie worked together at the plant in the fictional town of Fernwood, Ohio. Loretta never really did make the big time, but she did have marginal success. In one episode, Loretta makes an appearance on The Dinah Shore Show. She was talking about all of the people who had helped her along her way. During a break, she was told that some of those people were Jews. After that she referred to Jews as “them that what killed our Lord.” The host quickly signaled to cut to commercial. Maybe this explains why Loretta never became a “Super Star.”
Mary Hartman ended when Louise Lasser left the show in 1977, but the remaining cast stayed on for one more year to film Forever Fernwood. The series ended with Loretta and Charlie finally getting the child that they had always wanted. While working on Mary Hartman, Place also wrote scripts for several TV sitcoms, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis and M*A*S*H, usually in collaboration with her professional partner Linda Bloodworth. Place hosted Saturday Night Live in 1977 and was one of the rare talents to host and also appear as the musical guest (with Willie Nelson on the duet “Something to Brag About”).
In films since 1976's Bound for Glory, Place has only occasionally been given a chance to shine on the big screen. The best of her early movie roles include Bernice, the washout nightclub singer who briefly replaces Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1976), and Meg, the reconstituted "child of the sixties" who desperately craves motherhood in The Big Chill (1983).
In the 1979 Burt Reynolds film, Starting Over, Place plays the first woman whom Reynolds dates after a divorce. On their blind date, Place's character is a bit too zealous and practically knocks Reynods down in the elevator in her building in a last ditch attempt to make him fall for her. Instead, she just falls on him.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Place appeared in a number of television movies and a starring role in the 1992 Kurt Russell and Martin Short movie Captain Ron. 1994 saw her return to television in the recurring role of Camille Cherski on My So Called Life. She had the role of Dot Black in Francis Ford Coppola's John Grisham's The Rainmaker in 1997.
Place was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award's for her work in the 1996 film Manny and Lo. She plays the matronly Elaine, who would love to have a child and works in a maternity shop, but never married and is past her child-bearing years. Place also directed episodes of HBO sitcom Dream On, NBC's Friends and Baby Boom. She recently provided at least two voices for Fox's animated show King of the Hill in an episode in which Peggy Hill competes in the Mrs. Heimlich County Pageant. She voiced both a competitor and the coordinator of the pageant.
In the fall of 2002, Place had a sizable role in the Reese Witherspoon movie Sweet Home Alabama. She played Reese's mother, Pearl Smooter, with a very evident throwback to her Loretta character. Also in 2002, she was in Human Nature starring Tim Robbins and Patricia Arquette and in A Woman's a Helluva Thing with Penelope Ann Miller. Additionally, 2002 saw the release of the film in which Place buddies up with Albert Brooks in the dark comedy My First Mister. The story focuses on a developing relationship between an isolated, rebellious 18-year-old (Leelee Sobieski) and an engaging older man (Brooks). Place plays Brooks' best friend. The film marks the directorial debut for Chicago Hope's Christine Lahti.
Place was also in Being John Malkovich as the receptionist with a reception problem, Floris, and in Girl, Interrupted. While not in any scenes together, this marked the third time that Mary Kay had done a film with one of her former My So-Called Life co-stars. First it was Claire Danes in The Rainmaker, second with Bess Armstrong in Pecker and then Jared Leto in Girl, Interrupted. In 2000 Mary Kay co-directed Don Henley's video for “Taking You Home”. Also in 2000, she had a small part in her second Lisa Krueger movie (after Manny and Lo) Committed, with actress Heather Graham.
In 2001 she played the United States Surgeon General on NBC's The West Wing. The character was revived for episodes in the 2004 season. In the original mini-series for PBS's Armistead Maupin's Tale of the City which aired in the early 1990's, Place a self-referential moment. Her character was on screen for about 30 seconds, but while she was in the foreground, some folks at a party were watching Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Showtime picked up the Tales franchise, but Place in the second installment. She did have a role in the third mini-series, Further Tales of the City (2001) which featured her in the role of Prue Giroux.
On May 9, 2003, the University of Tulsa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa inducted Place as an honorary alumna member.
Being John Malkovich (1999)
