Hope Lange

Hope Elise Ross Lange (November 28, 1933 – December 19, 2003) was an American film, stage, and television actress. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Selena Cross in the 1957 film Peyton Place. In 1969 and 1970, she twice won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Carolyn Muir in the sitcom The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. Early life Lange was born into a theatrical family in Redding, Connecticut. Her father, John George Lange, was a cellist and the music arranger for Florenz Ziegfeld and conductor for Henry Cohen; her mother, Minette (née Buddecke), was an actress. They had two other daughters, Minelda and Joy, and a son, David. John worked in New York City and the family moved to Greenwich Village when Hope was a young child. Lange sang with other children in the play Life, Laughter and Tears, which opened at the Booth Theatre in March 1942. Her father died in September 1942. The family stayed in New York City after his death. At age 9, she had a speaking part in the award-winning Broadway play The Patriots, which opened in January 1943. From 1944 to 1956 Minette ran a restaurant on Macdougal Street, near Washington Square Park, called Minette's of Washington Square. (Some sources confuse it with Minetta Tavern, an Italian restaurant on Macdougal Street, founded in 1937.) The entire family worked there; Minelda ran the cash register, and Joy and Hope waited on tables.