New Rochelle's Frances Sternhagen, beloved Broadway actress, was also a neighbor

Frances Sternhagen, the award-winning Broadway actress known for playing no-nonsense matriarchs on “Sex and the City,” "Cheers" and “ER,” died Nov. 27 at the New Rochelle home where she lived 64 of her 93 years.

Her son, Paul Carlin, confirmed her passing.

Sternhagen was nominated seven times for a Tony Award and won twice, for "The Good Doctor" and "The Heiress." Other Broadway roles included "Equus," "On Golden Pond," and "You Can't Take it with You." Off-Broadway, for two years she played the title role in "Driving Miss Daisy," opposite Morgan Freeman, then Earl Hyman and Arthur French.

Asked by Charlie Rose in a 1992 interview about seeing roles she had played on the stage go to Katherine Hepburn (“On Golden Pond”) and Jessica Tandy (“Driving Miss Daisy”) when Hollywood adapted the works, Sternhagen demurred.

“It hurts a little, but I've gotten very used to it,” she said with a laugh. “It's marquee value and it's money. Making a movie is a very expensive proposition. If they could get Katharine Hepburn, they're going to take Katharine Hepburn.”

In that same interview, she recalled a backstage visit from Tandy.

“Jessica Tandy — who I had worked with and who I just loved — she came back, she saw it twice. And the first time she saw it, she sat in my dressing room and said "I don't know how they're going to make a movie out of this perfect little play.' And they did. And it was wonderful.”

On TV, Sternhagen was nominated for Emmys in 2002 (guest actress in a comedy, “Sex and the City,” as the prickly Bunny McDougal); 1992 (supporting actress in a comedy, “Cheers,” as Esther Clavin); 1991 (guest actress in a comedy, “Cheers,” as Esther Clavin). She also appeared on “The Closer” and on “ER” as Dr. John Carter's grandmother.

Sternhagen made a career playing flinty, wise-cracking matriarchs, characters much older than she was.

There were big-screen roles, starting with "Up the Down Staircase" in 1967, and including "Starting Over" (1979), "Outland" (1981), "Bright Lights, Big City" (1988), and "Misery" (1990).

An actor who married an actor, raised actors

Born Jan. 13, 1930, in Washington, D.C., Frances Hussey Sternhagen was the daughter of a U.S. tax court judge and his homemaker wife. She graduated from Vassar and taught theater to schoolchildren before performing at the Arena Stage Group.

In 1956, she married actor Thomas Carlin. They moved to the Sutton Place neighborhood of New Rochelle near the marina and had six children — Paul, Amanda, Tony, Sarah, Peter and John — several of whom are in show business. Carlin died in 1991.

In a 2009 interview with The Journal News/lohud, Sternhagen credited Felicity Dell'Aquila, a long-ago English teacher at Rye High School, with starting the Carlin family off on its theatrical expansion.

"I guess she was like our agent," the actress recalled. Dell'Aquila invited Sternhagen and her husband, by then both Broadway actors, to read scenes in her Rye High School classroom.

Recaled Sternhagen: "She said: 'Why don't you two find something you can do with the children?' So we found a lot of material that we could do as a family. And we called it 'Family Affairs' and we did it at the Emelin and at Purchase. It was with Paul, Mandy and Tony. They were our actors at the time."

Then came Sarah, Peter and John.

Actress and mother

Sternhagen told stories with an ever-present twinkle in her eye. She wore her considerable talent lightly, wanting to talk more about her children’s accomplishments than her own.

"We didn't tell them to become actors; we didn't tell them not to. We just let them do their thing," Sternhagen said.

"We had a clarinet player, a trumpet player, another trumpet player and another trumpet player," she recalled, adding with a giggle: "I was just glad Tony switched from the violin."

She managed to keep her theater life and her family life separate. Neighbors in Sutton Manor — where the Carlins represented one of the smaller families, among households with eight and 13 children — knew her as "Frannie Carlin" or "Mrs. Carlin."

They would wave when they saw her walking to the station to catch the train to Grand Central on performance days, and saw her at the chapel at the College of New Rochelle, where she and her husband lent their talents as lectors.

She was the grand marshal of the New Rochelle Thanksgiving Parade and an easy touch when a theater group was holding a gala or an elementary school needed a guest reader.

Theater as a balance

Theater, she said, gave her life balance, even if it meant juggling the logistics of being a suburban mother.

"In my neighborhood, I'm the only actress," she said in 1992. "And it's interesting that in every other area of my life, there's no acting or theater at all. My theater friends are my theater friends. But in my neighborhood and back in my college friends and back when I lived in Washington, my Washington friends, there's nobody there who was in the theater. I never thought I'd be going into the theater."

She talked about "working outside in," how she liked to identify a character's walk and accent before diving into the emotional work and learning the lines.

"I love things where I have to do accents, for example. It's a kind of pattern that I then can get myself into," she said.

Sometimes, that meant borrowing from friends, she said sheepishly.

"I have a friend who has no idea that I used her in a movie. What I loved about it was it just began to happen. As I read it, pretty soon I found myself being tough and talking just the way she does. What was wonderful was that I got a little apprehensive that she might recognize herself. She came up to me after seeing the movie and said: 'I love that character you play,' and I thought 'She likes it.'"

And the critics liked Sternhagen.

Besides two Tonys and two (Off-Broadway) Obie Awards, she earned an Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. And to her adopted hometown’s New Rochelle Walk of Fame. The Helen Hayes Award Organization gave Sternhagen The Helen Hayes Tribute.

In addition to her son, Paul, she is survived by three other sons, Tony, Peter and John; two daughters, Amanda Carlin Sanders and Sarah Carlin; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Chris Selin, a Sutton Manor neighbor, recalled "many great nights with Frannie and the Carlin family, including Christmas Eve singalongs with the whole neighborhood invited."

Then there was the spring night in 1995 when Frances Sternhagen's theater life met Frannie Carlin's suburban life, the night she won the Tony Award for "The Heiress."

"All her neighbors In Sutton Manor let out a yell when Frannie’s name was announced, and everybody poured out of their homes," Selin recalled Wednesday. "There was a huge parade around the Manor, with pots banging and whatever noise makers folks could find."

A visitation will be held at the George T. Davis Funeral Home in New Rochelle from 4 to 7 p.m., Dec. 3. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at Holy Name Church in New Rochelle at 1:30 p.m., Dec. 4, with interment at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Putnam Valley on Dec. 5.

Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.