Marcia Rodd

Biography: For a time at the tail end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Marcia Rodd seemed poised for stardom, either on the big screen or on television. She was, at the outset of the 1970s, the ideal "gently" liberated woman -- Rodd was one of the first actresses to genuinely look good in the briefly fashionable close-cropped female hairstyle (a sort of attractive version of the "Moe Howard cut") of the period, conveying intelligence and sensitivity as well as independence. What's more, her first two film appearances included a starring role in Alan Arkin's fashionable black comedy Little Murders (1971) and a major supporting role in Herbert Ross' high-profile adult romance T.R. Baskin; she was also a recipient of choice roles from television producer Norman Lear. Somehow the stardom never arrived, but she remains a fascinating pop-culture symbol of the period. Rodd was born in Lyons, KS, and attended Northwestern University at the end of the 1950s and the start of the 1960sFor a time at the tail end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Marcia Rodd seemed poised for stardom, either on the big screen or on television. She was, at the outset of the 1970s, the ideal "gently" liberated woman -- Rodd was one of the first actresses to genuinely look good in the briefly fashionable close-cropped female hairstyle (a sort of attractive version of the "Moe Howard cut") of the period, conveying intelligence and sensitivity as well as independence. What's more, her first two film appearances included a starring role in Alan Arkin's fashionable black comedy Little Murders (1971) and a major supporting role in Herbert Ross' high-profile adult romance T.R. Baskin; she was also a recipient of choice roles from television producer Norman Lear. Somehow the stardom never arrived, but she remains a fascinating pop-culture symbol of the period. Rodd was born in Lyons, KS, and attended Northwestern University at the end of the 1950s and the start of the 1960s as a drama major, studying under Alvina Krause; her fellow undergraduates included Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. Arriving in New York during the early '60s, she made her off-Broadway debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in Oh Say Can You See! in 1962, and appeared in the showcase Talent 64. She made her Broadway debut in the replacement cast of Oh! What a Lovely War and later appeared in The Mad Show. Her late-'60s credits include Olivia in Your Own Thing, an update of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night -- which got Rodd her first appearance on a cast album -- and Bobbi Mitchell in Last of the Red Hot Lovers, working opposite James Coco. In 1970, she was cast as the doomed Patsy Newquist in Little Murders (1971), Alan Arkin's dark comedy of life in New York City, based on Jules Feiffer's off-Broadway play. Following her supporting role in T.R. Baskin in 1971, Rodd began her first foray into television, principally through the work of Norman Lear; in the second season of All in the Family, she played a harried single mother driven to desperate measures to make a decent life for her young son; and in Episode 37, which was the pilot for the series Maude, Rodd played Carol, the divorced daughter of the title character. Rodd declined to portray the role when the series was picked up, however, and the part went to the more physically endowed but less professionally adept Adrienne Barbeau. Rodd busied herself in New York theater during the early '70s, including a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the New York Shakespeare Festival, before moving to Los Angeles, where she continued her stage work and became a favorite actress of director Jonathan Demme, who used her in Citizens Band (1977) and The Last Embrace (1979). By the 1980s, she was no longer in the running for starring roles, but was a busy working actress in television, portraying Jack Weston's wife in the short-lived series The Four Seasons and playing the wife of Dr. Stanley Riverside on Trapper John, M.D. During the 1990s, Rodd returned to doing occasional feature films.… Expand