Louise Lasser Dies: ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ Star Was 87

Louise Lasser, whose pig-tailed braids, bangs and baby-doll gingham dresses took the nation by storm when they became her trademark look on Norman Lear’s Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in the 1970s, died Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.

Her death was reported by her friend Susan Charlotte to The New York Times.

Initially making her name in early Woody Allen films – the two married in 1966 – Lasser employed a droll, deadpan comic delivery to great effect not only in Allen’s Take the Money and Run, Bananas and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), but in buzzy commercials for NyQuil and Excedrin.

Early in her career she even briefly appeared on Broadway in 1962 as Barbra Streisand’s replacement in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale, but it wasn’t until January 1976 that Lasser shot to international stardom as the title character in Lear’s wildly offbeat soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

As envisioned by Lear, Hartman was not only a soap parody, but an actual soap, televised in syndication five days a week in half-hour installments, in some markets during traditional daytime soap timeslots and in some markets at 11 p.m. Both time periods were telling: The deadpan comedy and satirical bent was fitting in the post-primetime slots, while the faux melodrama of a working class family in small town Ohio (the fictional Fernwood) made for a clever addition to the afternoon sturm und drang that filled network hours.

With each episode opening in what was then the genre’s standard weepy music and static shot of a suburban kitchen, Mary Hartman (the name was repeated in both the show’s title and the audio accompanying the opening credits, with Mary’s mother, played by Dody Goodman, calling for her daughter as if summoning a child home for dinner) mixed everyday tribulations – at least as presented in advertising of the day – like waxy yellow building and bad coffee with domestic issues (impotence, adultery) and horrors of a more newsworthy kind (most notably, a mass murder just down the street from the Hartman residence).

In addition to Lasser and Goodman, the series starred, among others, Greg Mullavey as Mary’s slightly dim blue-collar husband Tom, Debralee Scott as her free-spirited younger sister Cathy and, in a career-making turn, Mary Kay Place as Mary’s best friend, neighbor and aspiring country singer Loretta Haggers.

While the series lasted only until July 1977, the daily schedule meant that the cast churned out 325 episodes, a wearying tally especially for Lasser, who was the series’ constant throughout all the various storylines. In a season-ending episode that seemed all too real, her character suffered a nervous breakdown on national television, a heartbreaking scene that Lasser seemed to play all too well.

Worn out from the grind, she made real-life headlines when she was arrested for cocaine possession: In May 1976 Lasser was shopping at a Beverly Hills antiques store when she apparently created a disturbance. Police were called, and officers found 80 milligrams of coke in her purse. (She said a fan had given it to her and she’d forgotten she had it).

Sentenced to six months of probation and continued psychiatric treatment, Lasser soon made headlines of another sort when she hosted the NBC’s Saturday Night Live, her spacey and quirky performance immediately becoming SNL lore as one of the worst hosting jobs in the show’s early history. Cast members complained that she refused to appear in sketches, and the episode was rarely, if ever, seen in reruns or syndication.

Born in Manhattan on April 11, 1939, to finance author Sol Jay Lasser and designer Paula Eisenreich Lasser, Lasser grew up in the Bronx and later attended Brandeis University, dropping out to study acting with famed coach Sanford Meisner. She met Allen in the early 1960s, began dating and appeared in a TV pilot he wrote called The Laughmakers, a sitcom set in a comedy club. The unaired pilot also starred Alan Alda and Sandy Baron.

In ’65, Lasser had a small uncredited role in the Allen-penned Peter Sellers comedy What’s New Pussycat? and performed a voice-over role in Allen’s 1966 comedy What’s Up, Tiger Lily? Roles in her husband’s higher profile features – Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971) and Everything You Always Wanted To Know… (1972). By the latter film, Lasser and Allen had been divorced for two years, a situation that would be echoed by the director later in the decade when his former girlfriend and frequent star Diane Keaton won an Oscar for Annie Hall.

Lasser had also begun appearing in guest shots on TV series such as Love American Style, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, McCloud, Medical Center and TV movies Coffee, Tea or Me? and Isn’t It Shocking?

Following her breakout success on Hartman, Lasser continued working but never in anything nearly as high-profile as her signature role. In 1980 she appeared for the first of three times in the hit comedy Taxi as Phyllis, the ex-wife of Judd Hirsch’s Alex Reiger, and that same year had an uncredited cameo in Allen’s Stardust Memories. Subsequent credits included Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998) and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000) as well as TV shows including St. Elsewhere and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

A noted New York acting teacher, Lasser more recently, she was featured in three episodes of Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO, playing, appropriately enough, a mostly forgotten artist who was newly revered by a younger generation.

Lasser is survived by her longtime partner Michael Citriniti.