Sandy Dennis, 54, an actress who won an Oscar as a whimpering wife in the film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and back-to-back Tony Awards for her work on Broadway, died of cancer March 2 at her home in Westport, Conn.
She followed that with an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1966 film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The searing story of a bickering couple also starred Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and George Segal.
Miss Dennis played the wife of the younger of the two faculty couples who indulge in an all-night drinking spree.
She stayed away the night the Oscar was awarded. "People always think that awards are very important, and they were very nice . . . but they were never anything I thought that much about," she once said.
As the teacher in a tough New York school in "Up the Down Staircase" in 1967, she won the Moscow Film Festival prize for best actress and was nominated for the New York Film Critics award.
In "The Out of Towners" in 1970, she starred opposite Jack Lemmon in the Neil Simon tale of hard-luck visitors to New York. Every time a disaster befell the couple, she whined, "Oh, my gawwwwwwd."
Sandra Dale Dennis was born in Hastings, Neb., on April 27, 1937. After a stint at Nebraska Wesleyan University and some experience with local stock companies, she headed for New York and the Actors Studio and soon began appearing in off-Broadway productions.
Her other films included "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean," "The Four Seasons," "Another Woman" and "The Indian Runner." Her stage credits included "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Miss Dennis lived for many years with jazz musician Gerry Mulligan. They separated in 1976. She also was romantically linked with actor Eric Roberts.
Survivors include her mother and a brother.
