At age 36, actress Barbara Colby was on the brink of TV-character
stardom when the native New Yorker was senselessly shot and killed one
evening on the streets of Los Angeles. The tall, toothy, husky-voiced,
frizzy-haired actress equipped with a keen, Brooklyn-tough sensibility
and dead-on comedy instincts had just started to make a name for
herself on the West Coast when tragedy occurred. Hollywood lost a
wonderful personality and promising talent that summer evening,
someone who was proving to the TV masses that she was a bona fide
contender.
Though born in New York City in 1939, Barbara was raised predominantly
in New Orleans where her interest in acting grew while attending high
school. After her graduation in 1957, she received a scholarship to
Bard College on the Hudson back in New York, followed by a single semester
at the Paris Sorbonne University in France.
While she tried to make a go of it professionally on the New York stage,
her spiritual world also began to open and develop. In contrast to her
tough, streetwise exterior, the gentle, deep-feeling lady avidly pursued
a metaphysical way of life. She didn't touch alcohol, was a strict vegetarian,
and meditated regularly as a devoted follower of the Indian Hindu guru
Swami Muktananda. She also was a firm believer in reincarnation.
Following a solid stage performance in "Six Characters in Search of an
Author" in 1964, Barbara took to the Broadway lights with a debut in
"The Devils" the following year. Throughout the rest of the decade, she
impressed in such plays as "Under Milk Wood", "Murder in the Cathedral"
and "Dear Liar", and also garnered fine notices for her Portia in "Julius
Caesar" in 1966 at the American Shakespeare Theatre Festival in
Stratford, Connecticut.
Marking her first prime TV role on a Columbo (1971) episode in 1971, Barbara
began a bi-coastal career and played a host of support/guest roles on
such established shows as Ein seltsames Paar (1968), McMillan & Wife (1971), F.B.I. (1965), Medical Center (1969), Kung Fu (1972) and Rauchende Colts (1955). But it was MTM
Productions that took strongly to Barbara after she made a hilarious
appearance as worldly prostitute Sherry opposite an impossibly
naive Mary Tyler Moore in a now-classic
1974 jail-cell episode of the Moore comedy series. Producers were so
impressed by Barbara's dead-pan comic timing and appealingly sharp,
cynical edge that they brought her character back in a subsequent
episode.
Never giving up her love for the stage, Barbara continued to gain in
strength in such quirky '70s plays as "Aubrey Beardsley the Neophyte",
"House of Blue Leaves", "Afternoon Tea" and "The Hot L. Baltimore". She
also returned to the classics with an off-Broadway role as Elizabeth in
"Richard III," and was back on Broadway with the plays "Murderous
Angels" in 1971 and a revival of "A Doll's House" starring
Liv Ullmann in the early part of 1975.
Following the close of the latter show, Barbara returned to Los Angeles
with a career-making offer. MTM had just cast her as a regular player
on a spin-off from Mary Tyler Moore (1970). The new sitcom, Phyllis (1975),
starred actress Cloris Leachman who had
played one of Mary's self-absorbed, scatterbrained friends to
Emmy-winning effect. Barbara, who appeared earlier with Leachman in the
TV-movie
A Brand New Life (1973),
was now in "second banana" position playing Cloris' boss, Julie
Erskine, the owner of a commercial photography studio. The actress had
officially paid her dues and broken into the top sitcom ranks. With two
films also in the can,
California Split (1974) and
The Memory of Us (1974), Barbara seemed
poised for bigger things.
On July 24, 1975, just weeks after her 36th birthday and only
three episodes into the TV series, Barbara and her acting
colleague/boyfriend,
James Kiernan, were walking to
their car following the teaching of an acting class in Venice,
California, when they were deliberately shot by two gang members inside
a parking garage area. Barbara, who was estranged at the time from
Robert Levitt Jr., the son of legendary entertainer
Ethel Merman, died instantly from her
single gunshot wound; Mr. Kiernan, who had recently appeared in an
episode of MTM's "Rhoda," was able to describe the shooting to police
before he succumbed but could not recognize the two men who shot them,
noting that the shooting had occurred without warning, reason or
provocation. Police noted that there was no attempt to rob the pair and
appeared to be a random act of violence. The killers were never caught
and the homicide remains a "cold case". Barbara was later cremated and
a memorial service held at Will Geer's
Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon. She was survived by her mother
and younger sister Renee.
Following the tragedy, comedienne
Liz Torres came on board to replace
Barbara in the Julie Erskine part. The role itself lasted for only one
season before they changed the sitcom's setting in order to try and
improve the lackluster ratings. It didn't help. Despite a Golden Globe
win for Leachman, the show was canceled after only one more season. In
retrospect, one can't tell whether Barbara might have made a difference
in the sitcom's ratings or outcome, but the fact remains that a single
inexplicably brutal and senseless act snuffed out the life of a star
comedienne in the making.
