Peggy Feury (born Margaret Feury; June 30, 1924 – November 20, 1985) was an American actress on Broadway, in films, and on television. She became a highly regarded acting teacher in New York and then in Los Angeles. Throughout her career, she taught many notable students.
Education Feury was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her father was Richard Feury; her mother, born in Ireland, was also Margaret Feury; and her younger sister was Elinor Feury.1940 U.S. Federal Population Census She graduated from Barnard College, then attended the Yale School of Drama, later studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.Vilga, Edward. Acting Now: Conversations on Craft and Career. Rutgers University Press (1997) page 202.
While at Yale, Feury met and then married her first husband, playwright Louis S. Peterson.Gussow, Mel. "Louis Peterson, 76, Playwright Who Opened Doors for Blacks" The New York Times. 1 May 1998. Less than a decade later, following their divorce and Feury's remarriage, Peterson's semi-autobiographical play Entertain a Ghost was produced, chronicling a deteriorating marriage between a fictional playwright and actress with obvious parallels to Peterson and Feury.Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath. African American Dramatists: An A-to-Z Guide Greenwood Publishing Group (2004). Page 350. The play received from the Village Voice a positive and detailed review that expressed the feeling that the production should have run longer. It described it as "a daring and deeply exploratory new play, the best damned failure I've seen in years".Tallmer, Jerry. "Theatre: Entertaining a Ghost". Village Voice. April 19, 1962.The New York Times Theater Reviews, Volume 7: 1960 - 1966. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times. 1966. p. 167.
Actress As Margaret Feury she appeared on Broadway in Me and Molly;Bordman, Gerald. American Theatre : A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1930–1969. Oxford University Press (1996) page 273. Nathan, George Jean. The Theatre Book of the Year, 1947–1948: A Record and an Interpretation. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press (1975) page 306. Sunday Breakfast (staged by noted acting teacher Stella Adler);Sunday Breakfast. Internet Broadway DatabaseFrancis, Bob. "'Sunday Breakfast': Review". The Billboard. 7 June 1952. "[The Deckers] seem a scurvy lot of thoroughly uninteresting folk [but] good actors have taken on the Decker family chores [including] Margaret Feury as [Decker's] shrewish, self-centered wife."] Enter Laughing; Peer Gynt, starring John Garfield, Mildred Dunnock, and Karl Malden, directed by Lee Strasberg;Francis, Bob. The Billboard. February 10, 1951. "Broadway Openings: Peer Gynt" The Grass Harp, directed by Actors Studio co-founder Robert Lewis; The Lady of the Camellias, directed by Franco Zeffirelli,Playbill Vault Chekov's Three Sisters, directed by Strasberg (with Feury eventually replacing Geraldine Page as Olga),Shelley, Peter. Sandy Dennis: The Life and Films. McFarland. (2013) and The Turn of the Screw.Internet Broadway Database IBDBPlaybill databaseBroadway World Off-Broadway she starred in Frank Wedekind's Earth Spirit at the Provincetown Playhouse.MacDonald, Dennis. "Off-Broadway Review: Earth Spirit". The Billboard. June 17, 1950.
Between 1956 and 1969, the Actors Studio undertook a project to record and archive work that was being done there, including performances of scenes from dramatic literature. Her performances occur in recordings of Idiot's Delight, La Dolce Vita, Lie Down in Darkness, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ship of Fools, Ulysses, and others. These recordings have been archived as part of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections.Actors Studio Recordings, 1956–1969: summary. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. Feury participated in this project from its inception until her relocation to Los Angeles in December 1968.University of Wisconsin Digital Collections
Feury appeared in a number of television dramas beginning in the Golden Age of Television,IMDb including, in 1961, a significant role she played in “Murder is a Face I Know”, an episode from The Naked City, which can be found on the internet."Murder is a Face I Know". The Naked City. (1961)"Murder is a Face I Know". The Naked City. (1961)
In November 1961, an early draft of the first scene of Edward Albee’s play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was presented on the public television program Playwright at Work. The characters George and Martha – which would later be originated on stage by Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen, and on screen by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – were portrayed by Shepperd Strudwick and Feury."Wednesday Television Programs: Evening". The Pittsburgh Press. 22 November 1961.
On October 2, 1977, Feury appeared in Iowa, the second season premiere of Visions, PBS's Peabody Award-winning dramatic anthology series; it was directed by Lloyd Richards, and was playwright Murray Mednick's television debut."'Visions' Series Begins New Season". The Lakeland Ledger. October 2, 1977. The critical reaction was disappointment,Wolcott, James. "Impaired Visions". The Village Voice. October, 1977.McNally, Owen. "TV: New 'Iowa' Taps Roots Theme". The Hartford Courant. October 1, 1977. "No doubt 'Iowa' is far superior to most TV fare. But 'Visions' isn't to be judged by that sort of pathetic measure. The Peabody-Award-winning series has to be judged by its own very high standards of excellence." but the actors fared better, Feury in particular. As the unwilling nursing home resident whose disjointed recollections provide her granddaughter an invaluable connection to her Iowa roots, Feury's portrayal was judged "[b]y far the best acting performance" by The Hartford Courant.McNally, Owen. "TV: New 'Iowa' Taps Roots Theme". The Hartford Courant. October 1, 1977. "By far the best acting performance is turned in by Peggy Feury as the grandmother. She makes the old woman's recollections of Iowa credible and displays a fine, irascible edge whenever she comes on strong like a harridan or a Hamlet feigning madness." Her performance, as the character veers "from family feeling to suspicion to self-absorbed recollection" – was noted by The Boston Globe,Henry 3rd, William A.. "'Iowa' Play Leads Series". The Boston Globe. October 1, 1977. "If, as Yeats once suggested, every play is written for the sake of a single scene, 'Iowa' was written for the tender scene between a sensitive girl recovering from a breakdown and her tough, addled grandmother. The old woman veers from family feeling to suspicion to self-absorbed recollection of her girlhood - recollection from which the granddaughter somehow draws a sense of her own continuity and place. [...] The performances, however, are remarkable, particularly by Carol Fox as the girl and Peggy Feury as the grandmother." with The Los Angeles Times citing her "almost effortless grace" and "marvelous ferocity."Smith, Cecil. "Dramas Mark the Greene-ing of Sunday Eve". The Los Angeles Times. September 28, 1977. pp. "Under Rick Benewitz's direction, it is performed with an almost effortless grace, most memorably in the fury of Peggy Feury. [...] Grandma's not dead; she's been moved to a rest home, where she lives amid other blank-eyed old people waiting for death. She's played with marvelous ferocity by Peggy Feury, a snarling whirlwind of an old woman with an Irish brogue in a wheelchair, hiding the chocolates she lives on under her shawl." Critic James Wolcott writes: One scene teems with unruly life: Eileen visits her grandmother (Peggy Feury) in the nursing home, and the grandma's semi-senile outbursts have a crazy, cawing theatricality. "This is a cattle yard," says Feury's crone as the camera stares down the discarded people. "Bellowing, constant bellowing." Another patient – babbling "Operator, operator, operator" – is wheeled across the screen and grandma, like an Alice-in-Wonderland queen, issues a command: "Choke her!" This disreputably funny scene is capped when a nurse happens by and – perfect joke – turns out to be a Lily Tomlin lookalike.
In 1982, Feury appeared as "Colonel Buckholtz," a perfectionist colonel who inspects Margaret Houlihan and the nurses in "Hey, Look Me Over," the opening episode of M*A*S*H Season 11.
Feury's film credits include Matt Cimber's The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976), Richard C. Sarafian's The Next Man (1976) starring Sean Connery, Elia Kazan's film of The Last Tycoon (1976), starring Robert De Niro, Carl Reiner's All of Me (1984), starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin, Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion (1984), and Feury's final screen performance, in 1918 (1985), written by Horton Foote."'1918 (1985)': Full Acting Credits". The New York Times. A brief appearance in Donald Shebib's Heartaches (1981) was singled out by New York Times critic Vincent Canby: "That very fine actress Peggy Feury appears in a tiny but important scene as the doctor who advises Bonnie about a possible abortion."Canby, Vincent. "Margot Kidder in 'Heartaches'". The New York Times. 19 November 1982.
By far Feury's most substantial film role (in terms of both sheer size and importance to a film's narrative) came in a little seen low-budget psychological horror film – John Ballard's Friday the 13th: The Orphan (1979), based on the short story Sredni Vashtar by Saki.Albright, Brian. "New Jersey". Regional Horror Films, 1958–1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 239. . In Nightmare USA (his 2007 study of lesser-known American exploitation filmmakers), Stephen Thrower writes: Then there's Peggy Feury, a skilled and thoughtful actress who demonstrates here how she came to be one of the leading lights in her profession. (She taught acting at the Actors Studio, alongside Lee Strasberg.) The role of Aunt Martha is already well-written, but Feury brings her own amazingly subtle shadings to the part.Thrower, Stephen (2007). Growing Pains: John Ballard on the making of Friday the 13th: The Orphan. Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Independents. Godalming: FAB Press. p. 300. .
Teacher Feury was a charter member of the Actors Studio and frequently led sessions there when Lee Strasberg was unavailable.Strasberg, John. Accidentally on Purpose: Reflections on Life, Acting, and the Nine Natural Laws of Creativity. Hal Leonard Corporation (1999) page 65. Van Horne, Janice. A Complicated Marriage: My Life with Clement Greenberg. Counterpoint (2013) Page 212. She also taught her own classes in the same building where Strasberg taught, behind Carnegie Hall.
In December 1968, at Strasberg's suggestion, Feury moved to Los Angeles with her husband William Traylor and their two daughters.Oakley, James. "Susan Traylor's LA Story". Interview Magazine. July 11, 2012. "So after my dad came to Los Angeles, Lee suggested she go out too, because he wanted to open a teaching studio there. She brought us out and surprised my dad. [...] It was Christmastime, and we were so sad because there was no snow. My sister and I took soap and put it all over the Christmas tree. Susan Strasberg was living in the Colony, but she was going to Italy to make a movie, so she let us stay in her house while she was away." See also: Strasberg, Susan. "Part Four". Bittersweet. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. pp. 250-251. . "When I returned to Los Angeles, I found a home in Malibu Colony, a private group of about seventy-five houses. [...] No sooner had we settled into this paradise than I was offered not one but two films in Europe; one to be shot in Italy, the other in France. [...] Two old friends, Peggy and Bill Trayler [sic], had decided to come to California with their daughters, Susan and Stephanie. They needed a place to stay, so I sublet my home to them. [...] The film, The Sisters, was about two siblings, very melodramatic and Italian, but I enjoyed the work in spite of the plot."