1. Reta Shaw was an American character actress known for playing strong, hard-edged, working women in film and on many of the most popular television programs of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States.
18 Facts About Reta Shaw
1. 2.
Reta M Shaw was born in South Paris, Maine, on September 13,1912, to Howard Shaw.
3.
Reta Shaw graduated from Paris High School in 1929, and was awarded the Alumni Prize, as well as a varsity letter for her role as manager of the girls track team, at commencement.
4.
Reta Shaw sang at the South Paris Congregational Church and participated in amateur theatricals, and would later study acting and graduate from the Leland Powers School of the Theater in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Reta Shaw subsequently did comedy work in night clubs, and during World War II joined the Red Cross Entertainment Unit, serving for three years, mostly overseas, including 18 months in Iceland.
6.
Reta Shaw's first credited appearance on the Broadway stage was in 1947's It Takes Two.
7.
Reta Shaw then appeared in Virginia Reel and on Broadway in a comedic role as Mabel in the original production of The Pajama Game in 1954, as well as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Picnic, and Annie Get Your Gun, the last on tour with Mary Martin.
8.
Reta Shaw had featured roles in several motion pictures, including Picnic, The Pajama Game, Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, The Ghost and Mr Chicken, Bachelor in Paradise and Escape to Witch Mountain.
9.
Reta Shaw appeared in the first season of The Ann Sothern Show in the role of Flora Macauley, the overbearing wife of Jason Macauley, played by Ernest Truex.
10.
Reta Shaw appeared in Pollyanna in 1960 as Tillie Langerlof.
11.
Reta Shaw appears in a 1962 episode of the series Outlaws with Barton MacLane.
12.
Reta Shaw plays a comic role for The Lucy Show as a grandmother who sits on a $500 bill that Lucy lost and soon after sits on Lucy's hand in the episode "Lucy Misplaces $2,000".
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Reta Shaw appears too as the bar hostess Teeney in the 1964 episode "The Richard Bloodgood Story" of the series Wagon Train.
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Reta Shaw appeared twice in CBS's The Andy Griffith Show, as escaped convict Big Maude Tyler and as Eleanora Poultice, the educated voice teacher of Barney Fife.
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On television, Reta Shaw was seen in Mister Peepers, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Millionaire.
16.
Reta Shaw played a housekeeper named Fredocia whom Steve had hired after Bub took a trip to Ireland.
17.
Reta Shaw appeared in a season 4 episode of I Dream of Jeannie titled "Jeannie and the Wild Pipchicks", in which she played a strict Air Force dietician who has her innermost inhibition released.
18.
Reta Shaw died in 1982 at age 69 from emphysema in Encino, California.