Theatre & dance / Film & TV
Julie Harris
1925–2013 · actress
One of the great actresses of the American stage, winner of five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play, born and raised in Grosse Pointe.
- Born
Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan- Died
West Chatham, Massachusetts
aged 87- Birth name
- Julia Ann Harris
- Detroit years
- 1925–1940s
- Field
- Theatre & dance, Film & TV
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Julie Harris was born in Grosse Pointe Park, on Detroit's eastern lakeshore, the daughter of an investment banker and a nurse, and grew up in the Grosse Pointes. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, one of three private schools that merged in 1969 to form today's University Liggett School. Drawn to the stage as a teenager, she went east to train, including a year at the Yale School of Drama, and made her Broadway debut in 1945. Her performance as the lonely twelve-year-old Frankie in The Member of the Wedding (1950), repeated on film in 1952, made her a star, and she played opposite James Dean in East of Eden (1955). Over the next decades she won a record five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play, the last for The Belle of Amherst, her one-woman portrait of Emily Dickinson.
Highlights
- Five Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play (1952–1977) and a 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony
- Oscar nomination for The Member of the Wedding (1952)
- Abra opposite James Dean in East of Eden (1955)
- Three Primetime Emmys and a Grammy for The Belle of Amherst
- National Medal of Arts (1994) and Kennedy Center Honors (2005)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1930s–1940s
Grosse Pointe Country Day School (now University Liggett School)
Closed · 1969
Harris graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which merged with two other schools in 1969 to form University Liggett School; the address is Liggett's current campus.