Cape Fear Actress Polly Bergen Dies Aged 84

Emmy-winning actress Polly Bergen, who played the terrorised wife in the original Cape Fear film and more recently starred in Desperate Housewives, has died aged 84.

The star died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, surrounded by family and close friends, her publicist Judy Katz said.

Bergen became a household name after recording albums and playing leading roles in films, stage musicals and television dramas.

She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panellist, and founded a thriving beauty products company that bore her name and made her millions.

Bergen was 20 and already an established singer when she starred with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in her first movie, At War With The Army. She joined them in two more comedies, That's My Boy and The Stooge.

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.

Robert Mitchum had the key role in the landmark 1962 film Cape Fear, playing the sadistic ex-convict who terrorises a lawyer (Gregory Peck), his wife (Bergen) and daughter because he blames Peck's character for sending him to prison.

The film was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese.

In recent years, Bergen played Felicity Huffman's mother on Desperate Housewives and the mistress of Tony Soprano's late father on The Sopranos.

Nellie Paulina Burgin was born in 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, into a family that at times relied on welfare to survive. The family eventually moved to California, and Polly, as she was called, began her career singing on radio in her teens.

"I was fanatically ambitious," she recalled in 2001. "All I ever wanted to be was a star. I didn't want to be a singer. I didn't want to be an actress. I wanted to be a star."

Bergen's personal life was not as smooth as her career. Her four-year marriage to actor Jerome Courtland ended in an acrimonious divorce in 1955. Her second marriage was to super-agent and producer Freddie Fields. The couple divorced in 1975 after 18 years.

In 1982 she married entrepreneur Jeff Endervelt. She co-signed his loans and gave him millions to invest from her beauty company profits.

She said in a 2001 New York Times interview: "He would come home and say 'Honey, sign this'. I wouldn't even look at it. Because you trust your husband."

The stock market crash of the 1980s wiped out the investments. She divorced him in 1991, and she said he left her with so many debts that she had to sell her New York apartment and other belongings to avoid bankruptcy.

She also battled emphysema and other ailments in the late 1990s, a result of 50 years of smoking.

She is survived by her children Peter Fields, Kathy Lander and Pamela Fields, and her three grandchildren.