NEW YORK — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original “Cape Fear” and the first woman president in “Kisses for My President,” died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.
Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Conn., from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, surrounded by family and close friends.
A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist, and founded a thriving beauty products company that bore her name.
In recent years, she played Felicity Huffman’s mother on “Desperate Housewives” and the past mistress of Tony Soprano’s late father on “The Sopranos.”
Bergen won an Emmy in 1958 portraying the tragic singer Helen Morgan on the anthology series “Playhouse 90.” She was nominated for another Emmy in 1989 for best supporting actress in a miniseries or special for “War and Remembrance.”
Talking to women in a business group in 1968, she said her definition of success was “when you feel what you’ve done fulfills yourself, makes you happy and makes people around you happy.”
Bergen was 20 and already an established singer when she starred with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in her first movie, “At War With the Army.” She joined them in two more comedies, “That’s My Boy” and “The Stooge.”
In 1953, she made her Broadway debut with Harry Belafonte in the revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.” In 1957-58 she starred on the musical-variety “The Polly Bergen Show” on NBC, closing every broadcast with her theme song, “The Party’s Over.” Also during the 1950s, she became a regular on the popular game show “To Tell the Truth.”
Bergen published the first of her three advice books, “The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm,” in 1962. That led to her own cosmetics company, which earned her millions.
In the landmark 1962 suspense film, “Cape Fear,” Robert Mitchum played the sadistic ex-convict who terrorizes a lawyer (Gregory Peck) and his wife (Bergen) and daughter because he blames Peck for sending him to prison.
Nellie Paulina Burgin was born in 1930 in Knoxville, Tenn. She is survived by her children Peter Fields, Kathy Lander and Pamela Fields and three grandchildren.
