Barbara Baxley, a stage, film and television actress, was found dead Thursday in her New York apartment.
She was 63.
The medical examiner`s office said the cause of death apparently was a heart attack.
Since her 1948 Broadway debut as a baffled bride in a revival of Noel Coward`s ”Private Lives,” starring Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook, Miss Baxley played a wide variety of roles in productions that ranged from Shakespeare to musical comedies.
In 1960 she played a different bride, this one from Texas, in the Tennessee Williams play ”Period of Adjustment,” for which she received a Tony nomination.
She also won critical praise as Sally Field`s mother in the 1979 film
”Norma Rae” and again in 1981 as a business executive in Wendy Wasserstein`s play, ”Isn`t It Romantic.”
In his review of ”Isn`t It Romantic,” Mel Gussow of The New York Times cited Miss Baxley`s ”stylish personification of boardroom urbanity.”
Miss Baxley`s other Broadway credits include ”Whodunnit” (1983), ”The Three Sisters” (1964), ”She Loves Me” (1963), ”The Flowering Peach”
(1954), ”The Frogs of Spring” (1953), ”Camino Real” (1953) and ”Out West of Eighth” (1951).
Early in her career, she filled in for Jean Arthur in ”Peter Pan” and took over Julie Harris` role in ”I Am a Camera.”
Off-Broadway, she sang Brecht-Weill songs in ”Brecht on Brecht” (1962)
and appeared in ”To Be Young, Gifted and Black” (1969).
She played Isabel in ”Measure for Measure,” a New York Shakespeare Festival production in Central Park in 1966, and Portia in ”The Merchant of Venice” at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., in 1967.
At the Yale Repertory Theater she had the title roles in ”Mrs. Warren`s Profession” and ”Major Barbara.”
She starred in the national companies of ”Zorba,” ”The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” and the Kennedy Center Bicentennial production of
”Scarecrow.”
In Chicago she co-starred with George Grizzard in ”The Taming of the Shrew” and Moliere`s ”Misanthrope.”
Miss Baxley`s films included ”Nashville” (1975), ”Countdown” (1968),
”No Way to Treat a Lady” (1968), ”All Fall Down” (1962) and ”The Savage Eye” (1960).
Her many guest appearances on television included ”Murder, She Wrote,”
”Hawaii Five-O,” ”The Hitchcock Hour,” ”Studio One” and ”Playhouse 90.”
In the Norman Lear series ”All That Glitters,” she played the industrialist L. W. Carruthers.
Miss Baxley, born in Stockton, Calif., was graduated with honors in speech and history from the College of the Pacific in Stockton and won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where she studied with Sanford Meisner.
She was also a charter member of the Actors Studio, where she studied with Elia Kazan.
Among her honors was the Actors Studio Award for achievement in 1980.
She leaves no immediate survivors.
