Nancy Marchand (June 19, 1928 – June 18, 2000) was an American actress, whose career encompassed both stage and screen. Standing almost 6 feet tall, she began her career in theatre in 1951. She was perhaps most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant and Livia Soprano on The Sopranos.

Early years[link]

Marchand was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Raymond L. Marchand, a physician, and his wife, Marjorie (née Freeman), a pianist. She was raised Methodist.^[1]

Career[link]

Marchand made her Broadway debut in The Taming of the Shrew in 1951. Additional theatre credits include The Merchant of Venice, Love's Labour's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, Forty Carats, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, The Plough and the Stars, The Glass Menagerie, Morning's at Seven, Awake and Sing!, The Octette Bridge Club, Love Letters, Man and Superman, The Importance of Being Earnest, The School for Scandal, The Balcony, for which she won a Distinguished Performance Obie Award, and Black Comedy/White Lies, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. She was nominated four times for the Drama Desk Award, winning for Morning's at Seven. She won a second Obie for her performance in A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour.

Television[link]

On daytime television, Marchand created the roles of Vinnie Phillips on the CBS soap opera, Love of Life and Theresa Lamonte on the NBC soap, Another World. She also starred as matriarch, Edith Cushing, on Lovers and Friends, a short-lived soap opera.

On prime time television, Marchand was known for her roles of autocratic newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant - winning four Emmy Awards as Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series for her performance - and matriarch Livia Soprano, mother of Tony Soprano, on the HBO series The Sopranos, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. She appeared in many anthology series in the early days of television, including The Philco Television Playhouse (on which she starred in Marty opposite Rod Steiger), Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One, and Playhouse 90. Additional television credits include The Law and Mr. Jones, Spenser: For Hire, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Coach, and Night Court. She played Hester Crane, mother of Frasier Crane, on an episode of Cheers.

Films[link]

Marchand's feature film credits include Ladybug Ladybug, Me, Natalie, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, The Hospital, The Bostonians, Jefferson in Paris, Brain Donors, Reckless, The Naked Gun, Sabrina and Dear God and From the Hip (1986 film).

Death[link]

Marchand died from lung cancer and emphysema on 18 June 2000, the day before what would have been her 72nd birthday in Stratford, Connecticut. As a result, her character's death was written into the third season story line of The Sopranos. Her husband of 48 years, actor Paul Sparer (1923–1999), had died the previous year, also from cancer.^[2] The couple had three children.

References[link]

Notes

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008)

External links[link]

• Nancy Marchand at Find a Grave
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Broadway Database
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Movie Database
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981), was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the one of only two people to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (the other being Woody Allen). The other three time winners, Francis Ford Coppola , Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder , have all shared their awards with co-writers.^[1]

He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television.^[2] Martin Gottfried wrote, "He was a successful writer, the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism."^[3]

Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). The movie Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric. Film historian David Thomson termed it "daring, uninhibited, and prophetic. No one else would have dreamed of doing it."^[4]

Chayefsky's early stories were notable for their dialogue, their depiction of second-generation Americans and their sentiment and humor. They were frequently influenced by the author's childhood in the Bronx. The protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems: loneliness, pressures to conform or their own emotions.

Early life[link]

Chayefsky as a senior in high school, 1939.

He was born in the Bronx, New York to Ukrainian^[5] Jewish parents, Harry and Gussie Stuchevsky Chayefsky. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School,^[6] and then the City College of New York. While there, he played for the semi-professional football team Kingsbridge Trojans. He graduated with a degree in accounting, and then studied languages at Fordham University.

Military service[link]

During World War II, he joined the U.S. Army, where he received both a Purple Heart and the nickname Paddy. The nickname was given spontaneously when Chayefsky was awakened at dawn for kitchen duty. He asked to be excused for Mass. "Okay, Paddy," said the officer, and the name became habitual.^[7]

Serving with the 104th Infantry Division in the European Theatre, he was near Aachen, Germany when he was wounded, reportedly by a land mine. While recovering from his injuries in the Army Hospital near Cirencester, England, he wrote the book and lyrics to a musical comedy, No T.O. for Love. First produced in 1945 by the Special Services Unit, the show toured European Army bases for two years. The London opening of No T.O. for Love at the Scala Theatre in the West End was the beginning of Chayefsky's theatrical career. During the London production of this musical, Chayefsky encountered Joshua Logan, a future collaborator, and Garson Kanin, who invited Chayefsky to collaborate with him on a documentary of the Allied invasion, The True Glory.

Post-war[link]

Returning to the United States, Chayefsky worked in his uncle's print shop, Regal Press, an experience which provided a background for his later teleplay, Printer's Measure (1953). Kanin enabled Chayefsky to spend time working on his second play, Put Them All Together (later known as M is for Mother), but it was never produced. Producers Mike Gordon and Jerry Bressler gave him a junior writer's contract. He wrote a story, The Great American Hoax, which sold to Good Housekeeping but was never published.

He relocated to Hollywood, where he met his future wife Susan Sackler, and the couple married in February 1949. Failing to find work on the West Coast, Chayefsky returned to New York.

During the late 1940s, he began working full time on short stories and radio scripts, and during that period, he was a gagwriter for radio host Robert Q. Lewis. Chayefsky later recalled, "I sold some plays to men who had an uncanny ability not to raise money."^[8] During 1951-52, Chayefsky wrote adaptations for radio's Theater Guild on the Air: The Meanest Man in the World (with James Stewart), Cavalcade of America, Tommy (with Van Heflin and Ruth Gordon) and Over 21 (with Wally Cox).

His play The Man Who Made the Mountain Shake was noticed by Elia Kazan, and his wife, Molly Kazan, helped Chayefsky with revisions. It was retitled Fifth From Garibaldi but was never produced. In 1951, the movie As Young as You Feel was adapted from a Chayefsky story.

Television[link]

He moved into television with scripts for Danger, The Gulf Playhouse and Manhunt.

Philco Television Playhouse producer Fred Coe saw the Danger and Manhunt episodes and enlisted Chayefsky to adapt the story It Happened on the Brooklyn Subway about a photographer on a New York subway train who reunites a concentration camp survivor with his long-lost wife. Chayefsky's first script to be telecast was a 1949 adaptation of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? for Philco.

Since he had always wanted to use a synagogue as backdrop, he wrote Holiday Song, telecast in 1952 and also in 1954. He submitted more work to Philco, including Printer's Measure, The Bachelor Party (1953) and The Big Deal (1953). One of these teleplays, Mother (April 4, 1954), received a new production October 24, 1994 on Great Performances with Anne Bancroft in the title role. Curiously, original teleplays from the 1950s are almost never revived for new TV productions, so the 1994 production of Mother was a conspicuous rarity.

In 1953, Chayefsky wrote Marty, which was premiered on The Philco Television Playhouse, with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand. Marty is a poignant story of a decent, hard-working Bronx butcher, pining for the company of a woman in his life but despairing of ever finding true love in a relationship. Fate pairs him with a plain, shy schoolteacher named Clara whom he rescues from the embarrassment of being abandoned by her blind date in a local dance hall. The production, the actors and Chayefsky's naturalistic dialogue received much critical acclaim and influenced subsequent live television dramas. Chayefsky had a unique clause in his Marty contract that stated that only he could write the screenplay. Adapted into a 1955 film with Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, it earned Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Delbert Mann) and Best Actor (Borgnine). Chayefsky won his first Best Screenplay Oscar for the movie.

Chayefsky's The Great American Hoax was broadcast May 15, 1957 during the second season of The 20th Century Fox Hour. This was actually a rewrite of his earlier Fox film, As Young as You Feel (1951) with Monty Woolley and Marilyn Monroe. The Great American Hoax was shown on the FX channel after Fox restored some The 20th Century Fox Hour episodes and telecast them under the new title Fox Hour of Stars beginning in 2002.

Writing style[link]

Chayefsky gained the reputation as a realist for his television scripting.^[2] Chayefsky’s plays, broadcast live, adapted themselves well to the small screen format of early television through the utilization of physically restrained stage sets crafted so dialogue took precedence over action. His themes were often a testament to the struggles of the human condition, sagas of ordinary, hard- working people striving to maintain their hard-won middle-class status. His protagonists wrestled with personal problems, such as loneliness, pressure to conform to society’s expectations, and inability to understand or successfully manage their own emotional drives.

Broadway[link]

The seventh season of Philco Television Playhouse began September 19, 1954 with E. G. Marshall and Eva Marie Saint in Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, a play which relocated to Broadway theaters 15 months later; In 1956, Middle of the Night opened on Broadway with Edward G. Robinson and Gena Rowlands, and its success led to a national tour. It was filmed by Columbia Pictures in 1959.

The Tenth Man (1959) marked Chayefsky's second Broadway theatrical success, garnering 1960 Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Director (Tyrone Guthrie) and Best Scenic Design. Guthrie received another nomination for Chayefsky's Gideon, as did actor Fredric March. Chayefsky's final Broadway theatrical production, a play based on the life of Joseph Stalin, The Passion of Josef D, received unfavorable reviews and ran for only 15 performances.^[9]

Films[link]

After the success of Marty, he worked mainly on films. He received an Oscar nomination for The Goddess, loosely based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Directed by John Cromwell, it starred Kim Stanley as Emily Ann Faulkner, a small town blonde who achieves fame in films but becomes emotionally disturbed and a problem to her producer, her director, and her husband played by Lloyd Bridges.

Gore Vidal adapted Chayefsky's teleplay The Catered Affair into a film of the same name. In 2008, it was adapted to a Broadway musical by Harvey Fierstein with music and lyrics by John Bucchino. It had a four-month run, receiving 15 Tony and Drama Desk nominations.

He expanded his 1953 teleplay, The Bachelor Party, for the 1957 film adaptation. Directed by Mann, the drama has characters who are questioning the concept of marriage, of commitment to one person and going day after day to the same dull job to support a family.

The Americanization of Emily

During the 1960s his credits included The Americanization of Emily, which featured James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn, an anti-war comedy that remains both Garner's and Andrews' favorite of their films. Garner plays a naval officer so comically frightened under fire on D-Day that he actually runs the other way. Paint Your Wagon, a screen vehicle for Lee Marvin, was a lavish Western musical comedy. Paint Your Wagon director Joshua Logan said he "found Chayefsky to be close to a genius, but too close to stubborn."^[4]

The Hospital

He won two more Oscars, the first for The Hospital (1971) which featured George C. Scott and Diana Rigg. David Thomson describes it as a "lethally funny account of American social benevolence collapsing in its own bureaucratic chaos.^[10] Another review terms it "a scathing indictment of the medical community."^[11] (In 1980, after he was diagnosed with cancer, he refused surgery, claiming that he "feared retribution by the doctors" for his caustic portrayal of them in the film. He died the next year.^[11])

Network

The film was followed by Network (1976), which featured Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch (who posthumously was awarded an Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role") and Robert Duvall among other cast members. For both of these films Chayefsky received Golden Globe awards. The film annoyed many television executives and news anchors, but it won the acclaim of most critics.^[11] It was nominated for ten Academy Awards, winning four, including Best Actress for Faye Dunaway. Peter Finch and Beatrice Straight also won for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, and it resulted in Chayefsky's third and final award for Best Screenplay.

In a powerful scene set in a conference room of imperial décor and intimidating proportion, Chayefsky presents his prescient articulation of the evolutionary force of a forthcoming global economy and corporate prominence in the political sphere. Business mogul, Arthur Jensen, (actor Ned Beatty) lectures newscaster Howard Beale (actor Peter Finch):

Jensen: “…We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.” ^[12]

Chayefsky provided actor Peter Finch with one of the most iconic movie lines in film history. Finch as the unhinged news anchor, Howard Beale, implores his TV audience to rise in unanimous protest against universal injustice. Waving his arms in vehement appeal, he instructs the public to take up the call, go to their windows and with him in unison yell out to the world:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'^[13]

Although Chayefsky was an early writer for the television medium, he eventually abandoned it, "decrying the lack of interest the networks demonstrated toward quality programming." As a result, during the course of his career, he constantly toyed with the idea of lampooning the television industry, which he succeeded in doing with Network.^[11] The film is said to have "presaged the advent of reality television by twenty years"^[11] and was a "sardonic satire" of the television industry, dealing with the "dehumanization of modern life."^[11]

Novels[link]

Inspired by the work of John C. Lilly, Chayefsky spent two years in Boston doing research to write his science fiction novel Altered States (HarperCollins, 1978) about a man's search for his primal self through psychotropic drugs and an isolation tank. Chayefsky suffered greatly from stress while working on the novel, resulting in his heart attack in 1977. Subsequent to that misfortune, he was sued by one of the numerous scientific advisors he hired to help him with research.^[11] He wrote the screenplay for the 1980 film, but he is credited by his real first and middle name, Sidney Aaron, because of disputes with director Ken Russell.^[14]

Personal life[link]

The monument of Paddy Chayefsky in Sharon Gardens Division of Kensico Cemetery

Drama critic Martin Gottfried gives a general description of Chayefsky's personal traits as they may have affected his writings:

Chayefsky was a sturdy man of 42, compact and burly in the bulky way of a schoolyard athlete, with thick dark hair and a bent nose that could pass for a streetfighter's. He was a grown-up with one foot in the boys' clubs of his city youth, a street snob who would not allow the loss of his nostalgia. He was an intellectual competitor, always spoiling for a political argument or a philosophical argument, or any exchange over any issue, changing sides for the fun of the fray. A liberal, he was annoyed by liberals; a proud Jew, he wouldn't let anyone call him a "Jewish writer." In short, the life of the mind was a participant sport for Paddy Chayefsky.^[15]

The footstone of Paddy Chayefsky

Paddy and Susan Sackler Chayefsky's son Dan was born six years after their 1949 marriage. Despite an alleged affair with Kim Novak, Paddy and Susan Chayefsky remained married until his death.

Chayefsky died in New York City of cancer in August 1981 at the age of 58, and was interred in the Sharon Gardens Division of Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York. His personal papers are at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Filmography[link]

• The True Glory (1945), uncredited, with Garson Kanin
• As Young as You Feel (1955), with Lamar Trotti
• Marty (1955)
• The Catered Affair (1956)
• The Bachelor Party (1957)
• The Goddess (1958)
• Middle of the Night (1959)
• The Americanization of Emily (1964)
• Paint Your Wagon (with Alan Jay Lerner) (1969)
• The Hospital (1971)
• Network (1976)
• Altered States (1980)
• The Habakkuk Conspiracy (1983)

Television and stage plays[link]

Television (selection)

• 1950-55 Danger
• 1951-52 Manhunt
• 1951-60 Goodyear Playhouse
• 1952-54 Philco Television Playhouse
• 1952 Holiday Song
• 1952 The Reluctant Citizen
• 1953 Printer's Measure
• 1953 Marty
• 1953 The Big Deal
• 1953 The Bachelor Party
• 1953 The Sixth Year
• 1953 Catch My Boy On Sunday
• 1954 The Mother
• 1954 Middle of the Night
• 1955 The Catered Affair
• 1956 The Great American Hoax

Stage

• No T.O. for Love (1945)
• Middle of the Night (1956)
• The Tenth Man (1959)
• Gideon (1961)
• The Passion of Josef D. (1964)
• The Latent Heterosexual (originally titled The Accountant's Tale or The Case of the Latent Heterosexual) (1968)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Audio: WNYC: On The Media audio profile of Paddy Chayefsky, October 27, 2006
• Guide to the Paddy Chayefsky Papers, 1907-1998
• Jerry Haendiges Vintage Radio Logs: Theater Guild on the Air
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: Paddy Chayefsky
• Paddy Chayefsky at the Internet Movie Database
• Paddy Chayefsky at the Internet Broadway Database
• Paddy Chayefsky at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

Rod Steiger
From the film trailer for The Unholy Wife (1957)
Born	Rodney Stephen Steiger (1925-04-14)April 14, 1925 Westhampton, New York, U.S.
Died	July 9, 2002(2002-07-09) (aged 77) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1950–2002
Spouse	Sally Gracie (1952–58) Claire Bloom (1959–69) Sherry Nelson (1973–79) Paula Ellis (1986–97) Joan Benedict (2000–02)
Children	Anna Steiger Michael Steiger

Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the television programs Marty and Jesus of Nazareth.

Early life[link]

Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger,^[1][2] of French, Scottish, and German descent.^[3][4] Steiger was raised as a Lutheran.^[3][5] He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger's mother (who subsequently left show business).^[4] Steiger grew up with his alcoholic mother before running away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw action on destroyers in the Pacific.^[6]

Career[link]

Steiger appeared in over 100 motion pictures. He began his acting career in theatre and on live television in the early 1950s. On May 24, 1953, an episode of Goodyear Television Playhouse jump-started his career. The episode was the story of Marty written by Paddy Chayefsky. Marty is the story of a lonely homely butcher from the Bronx in search of love. Refusing to sign a seven-year studio contract, Steiger later turned down the role in the film version in 1955. Signing a studio contract at that time would "pigeon-hole" Steiger as to the roles he would later play and image portrayed on screen; those were two things Steiger objected to throughout his career. The role of Marty was turned over to Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine would receive the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Rod Steiger never regretted his decision to turn down the film role of Marty.

He won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Chief of Police Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967) opposite Sidney Poitier. He was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954), in which he played Marlon Brando's character's brother. He was nominated again, this time for Best Actor, for the gritty The Pawnbroker (1965), a Sidney Lumet film in which Steiger portrays an emotionally withdrawn Holocaust survivor living in New York City.

He played Jud Fry in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, in which he did his own singing. One of his favorite roles was as Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965). Steiger, the only American in the cast of that film, was initially apprehensive about working with such great British actors as Ralph Richardson and Alec Guinness and was afraid that he would stick out, but he won acclaim for his performance. He also befriended fellow actor Tom Courtenay on this film;^[7] the two remained friends until Steiger's death.

He also appeared in The Big Knife as an overly aggressive film studio boss who berates film star Jack Palance; as Al Capone in Al Capone (1959); as Mr. Joyboy in The Loved One; as the serial killer in No Way to Treat a Lady; and as a repressed gay NCO in The Sergeant (1968); as Rabbi Saunders in The Chosen (1981).

Steiger in 1978

He also played well-known figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte in Waterloo (1970); Benito Mussolini in The Last Four Days (1974) and again in Lion of the Desert (1981); W. C. Fields in W. C. Fields and Me (1976); Pontius Pilate in Franco Zeffirelli's TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977); and mob boss Sam Giancana in the TV miniseries, Sinatra (1992). He appeared in several Italian films, including Hands Over the City (1963) and Lucky Luciano (1974) (both Francesco Rosi's), and also Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dynamite (1971). In France, he starred in Claude Chabrol's Innocents with Dirty Hands opposite Romy Schneider.

In his later years he appeared in The Amityville Horror (1979); The Specialist (1994), and Mars Attacks!. On television, he appeared in the miniseries Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives (1985), Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993), and a 1995 Columbo television film. Among his final roles was the judge in the prison drama, The Hurricane (1999). The film reunited him with director Norman Jewison, who had directed him in In the Heat of the Night. His last film was A Month of Sundays.

Steiger also starred in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut's play Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971). In 1969, he appeared in the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man with his then-wife, Claire Bloom. He was offered the title role in Patton, but turned it down because he did not want to glorify war.^[8] The role was then given to George C. Scott, who won a Best Actor Oscar. Steiger called this refusal his "dumbest career move".

Steiger has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard which was unveiled 1 April 1997.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

Steiger was married five times: actress Sally Gracie (1952–1958),^[9] actress Claire Bloom (1959–1969),^[9] Sherry Nelson (1973–1979),^[9] Paula Ellis (1986–1997) ^[9] and actress Joan Benedict Steiger (married 2000 until his death).^[9]

He had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger (born in 1960) by Bloom, and a son, Michael Steiger (born in 1993), from his marriage to Ellis.^[9]

Death[link]

Steiger died in Los Angeles on July 9, 2002, aged 77, from pneumonia and complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor.^[9] He is buried in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

The film Saving Shiloh, released in 2006, was dedicated to his memory.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rod Steiger

• Rod Steiger at the Internet Movie Database
• Rod Steiger at the Internet Broadway Database
• He Blowed Up Real Good (TCM Movie Morlocks on Rod Steiger in Hennessy)
• Rod Steiger on BBC Radio Desert Island Discs

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)

Livia Soprano (née Pollio), played by Nancy Marchand, is a fictional character on the HBO TV series The Sopranos. She is the mother of Tony Soprano. A young Livia, played by Laila Robins and later by Laurie J. Williams is sometimes seen in flashbacks. Series creator David Chase has stated that the main inspiration for the character was his own mother.^{[citation needed]}

Plot details[link]

Livia Soprano, the family matriarch, seemingly derives little pleasure from life other than making the people around her miserable, especially her three children, Tony, Barbara and Janice. On her son's wedding day, she tells her new daughter-in-law Carmela that Tony would eventually get bored with her, and even tries to manipulate her brother-in-law, Junior, into putting out a hit on her own son after he tries to put her in a nursing home by mentioning that Tony is seeing a psychiatrist. She later tells Junior that Tony looks exactly like her cousin Cakey after he had a lobotomy, saying that his mother said it was better Cakey have died than go on living like that. It is later discovered that the FBI had bugged Green Grove (Livia's nursing home), and the recordings of Livia conspiring with Junior were played to Tony. While she was in hospital, she received a visit from Artie Bucco. She then tells him that Tony burned down his restaurant, presumably in another attempt to have Tony killed. Tony's plot for revenge is foiled when Livia suffers a stroke (said to be induced by repressed rage) and is taken into a hospital. However, while Tony originally attempts to suffocate her with a pillow, he then quickly changes tactic when he hears his mother had suffered a stroke. He then publicly threatens to kill her, informing her that he had heard her conspiring with Junior, thanks to the FBI tapes, saying, "I'm gonna have a nice, long, happy life, which is more than I can say for you". However, Tony sees Livia smirking at him, and, when Tony points this out, he has to be restrained by the hospital staff. When she gets out, Tony settles for acting as if she were already dead, attempting to end all contact and financial support. Tony's hostility toward Livia never diminishes, although he seems to be more accommodating of her toward the end of the second season after arriving at her house to visit Janice.

In the second episode of the third season, "Proshai, Livushka", Tony is seen to be significantly more tolerant of Livia, although this is possibly due to his enforced responsibility of her thanks to Janice's departure at the end of the previous season. His brief meeting with her in the same episode ends with the pair arguing before Tony storms out of the house.

Based on her conversations with Tony, Dr. Melfi speculates that Livia might suffer from some form of borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. Additionally, Tony tells Adriana (in "Irregular Around the Margins") that Livia suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome all her life.

After the second season, a storyline was planned where Livia would be called to testify against her son in court, giving evidence on stolen airline tickets she had received from him, but Marchand died in 2000 before it could be filmed. Existing footage and computer-generated imagery was used to create a final scene between Tony and Livia in the episode "Proshai, Livushka" in Season Three before the character too passed on. In the same episode, Artie experiences a brief flashback of a meeting with Livia, showing footage of a scene from a first season episode. Livia nevertheless appeared as a young woman in several flashbacks after then, as well as being frequently referenced, with Tony still far from resolving his feelings towards her.

Janice, during a conversation with Carmela calls into question whether or not her mother loves them, and that in therapy her therapist explained to her that she does indeed love them, but does not know how to express it.

During the sixth season episode "Mayham," when Tony is comatose from a gunshot wound, he has a vivid dream that some have construed as being a rendition of purgatory. The dream ends with Tony being beckoned into a house by his dead cousin Tony Blundetto; a woman who looks similar to Livia can briefly be seen in the doorway of the house. Tony then hears a child's voice calling "Daddy, don't go, come back." He then awakens to see his daughter Meadow and wife Carmela standing over him.

External links[link]

• HBO Profile: Livia Soprano