Barbara Bel Geddes, at 82; starred in TV series 'Dallas'

LOS ANGELES -- Barbara Bel Geddes, the winsome actress who rose to stage and movie stardom but reached her greatest fame as Miss Ellie Ewing in the long-running TV series ''Dallas," has died. She was 82.

The San Francisco Chronicle said Ms. Bel Geddes, a longtime smoker, died Monday of lung cancer at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Jordan-Fernald Funeral Home in Mount Desert, Maine, confirmed the death yesterday, but the family asked that no further information be given out.

Ms. Bel Geddes was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for the 1948 drama ''I Remember Mama" and was the original Maggie the Cat on Broadway in ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

But she was best known as the matriarch of the rambunctious Ewing oil family on ''Dallas," which hurtled to the top of the ratings despite negative reviews. Ms. Bel Geddes won an Emmy in 1980 as best lead actress in a drama series and remains the only nighttime soap star to be so honored.

''She was the rock of 'Dallas,' " said Larry Hagman, who played J.R. Ewing. ''She was just a really nice woman and a wonderful actress. She was kind of the glue that held the whole thing together."

Ms. Bel Geddes called ''Dallas" ''real fun," but it was also marked by tragedy. In 1981, Jim Davis, who played Miss Ellie's husband, Jock Ewing, died.

''It was like losing her own husband again," said ''Dallas" producer Leonard Katzman. ''It was a terribly difficult and emotional time for Barbara."

In March 1984, Ms. Bel Geddes was stricken with a major heart attack. Miss Ellie was played by Donna Reed for six months, then Ms. Bel Geddes returned to ''Dallas," remaining until 1990, a year before CBS canceled the show.

Hagman said he had encouraged Ms. Bel Geddes to give up the smoking habit, but it was doctors who got her to quit after the heart attack, he said. He recalled the makeup room on the ''Dallas" set being so filled with her cigarette smoke that he would ask to be made up in his dressing room.

''Dallas" came late in Ms. Bel Geddes's career. She had retired to take care of her husband, Windsor Lewis, after he fell ill with cancer in 1966. He died in 1972.

Her earnings depleted by his long illness, she found work scarce for a middle-aged actress, and said she was broke in 1978 when she accepted the role as Miss Ellie.

In 1945, Ms. Bel Geddes had made a splash on Broadway at 23 with her first important role in ''Deep Are the Roots," winning the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as best actress.

She announced to a reporter: ''My ambition is to be a good screen actress. I think it would be much more exciting to work for Frank Capra, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, or Elia Kazan than to stay on Broadway."

Hollywood was quick to notice. In 1946, she signed a contract with RKO Pictures that granted her unusual request to be committed to only one picture a year. In her first movie, she costarred with Henry Fonda in ''The Long Night," a disappointing remake of a French film.

Her second film was a hit, in which she played a budding writer in George Stevens's ''I Remember Mama," the touching story of an immigrant family in San Francisco starring Irene Dunne as Mama.

''I went out to California awfully young," she remarked. ''I remember Lillian Hellman and Elia Kazan telling me, 'Don't go, learn your craft.' But I loved films."

After four movies, Howard Hughes, who had bought control of RKO in 1948, dropped her contract because ''she wasn't sexy enough." Ms. Bel Geddes was devastated. But it turned out to be a good happenstance: She had time to return to the stage, and scored a triumph in 1955 in Tennessee Williams's ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

She was born in New York on Oct. 31, 1922, the daughter of renowned industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes.

''I didn't see much of my father," she said, ''but I absolutely adored him." After her education in private schools, he found her a job at a summer theater and used his connections with stage people to help her get work.

Early in her stage career, Ms. Bel Geddes married Carl Schreuer, an electrical engineer, and they had a daughter, Susan. The marriage ended after seven years in 1951, and that year she married director Lewis. They had a daughter, Betsy.