Ellen Weston, the actress, author and producer who appeared on Broadway, Get Sensible, S.W.A.T. and cleaning soap operas and penned songs for a pair of Lesley Gore comeback albums, has died. She was 87.
Weston died Might 28 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart in Los Angeles, her good friend, producer and supervisor Susan Zachary, advised The Hollywood Reporter.
The New York native portrayed Robin Fletcher on CBS’ The Guiding Gentle in 1963-64, Carol Pearson and Karen Gregory on NBC’s One other World in 1964-65 and Suzanne Thurston on CBS’ The Younger and the Stressed in 1978-80.
She wrote for the CBS cleaning soap Capitol in 1986, then was employed by Guiding Gentle government producer John Conboy in 2003 to function co-head author on that daytime drama. “I like to think of every day as a mini-movie,” she said in an interview with Cleaning soap Opera Digest.
Weston shared a WGA Award for her work and remained on the job for about two years earlier than she was changed by David Kreizman.
A daughter of educators, Ellen Rachel Weinstein was born in New York on April 19, 1939. She stated that when she was a child, she used to dream that she was a twin.
“One was always the adorable, well-loved star. The other was the poor soul, the nebbish,” she defined in a 1968 interview. “Show business always seemed so untouchable, like Cinderella. But I also always felt instinctively that there was something destructive about it and sensed some imminent danger in wanting it so badly.”
She attended the Performing Arts Excessive Faculty, Hofstra College, NYU and Hunter School and in 1960 made it to Broadway as an understudy within the drama Toys within the Attic, starring Jason Robards Jr. and Maureen Stapleton and directed by Arthur Penn.
The subsequent yr, the doe-eyed Weston was the sister of Sigmund Freud (portrayed by Steven Hill) in A Far Nation and in 1962 changed Betsy von Furstenberg within the forged of the long-running Jean Kerr comedy Mary, Mary, starring Barbara Bel Geddes.
Weston confirmed up as Dr. Steele, a sexy CONTROL chemist who doubles as a showgirl, on the third season (1967-68) of NBC’s Get Sensible and recurred as Betty Harrelson, the spouse of Steve Forrest’s Lt. “Hondo” Harrelson, on the primary season of ABC’s S.W.A.T. in 1975.
Her TV résumé additionally included stops on Run for Your Life, N.Y.P.D., Bonanza, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Mannix, Bewitched (because the Countess Piranha), Hawkins, Harry O, Barnaby Jones, The Bob Newhart Present, Cannon, Baretta and Surprise Girl.
As a lyricist, Weston wrote seven songs with Gore on the “It’s My Party” singer’s 1972 album, Someplace Else Now — her first LP in 5 years — and all of the tunes for her follow-up 1975 album, Love Me by Identify, produced by Quincy Jones.
“Together they would write a stellar 60 original songs,” Trevor Tolliver wrote in his 2015 e-book, You Don’t Personal Me: The Life and Occasions of Lesley Gore. “The meshing of Lesley’s musical know-how with Ellen’s genius as a wordsmith was genius.”
Weston went to legislation faculty a bit later in life and labored at CBS in enterprise affairs. Her first spec TV film bought and bought made, and her credit as a author and/or producer in that realm included 1999’s And the Beat Goes On: The Sonny and Cher Story for ABC.
She was married to music engineer Ami Hadani (co-founder of the Los Angeles recording studio TTG) and composer Marvin Laird; each marriages resulted in divorce. She is survived by her son, Jon Weston, a sound designer.
In an announcement, mates known as her “a uncommon one that had each proper and left-brain proficiency … she was as expert at a authorized temporary as she was with a knitting needle.
“She was our consigliere allotting recommendation, knowledge, compassion and care in equal measure — particularly after we most wanted an ear, a shoulder and a real confidante. She was past a loyal good friend — she was a fierce advocate for each single one in every of us.
“She took excellent care of herself, always tastefully put together with gorgeous outfits, the perfect makeup and more. Up until the very end, she was still dancing and taking new classes; the latest was a pottery class taught by a dear friend that ended a month before her passing.”
