Kate Reid's supporting women need not be agreeable to matter. We value the resistance she brings to Atlantic City, while her Linda Loman gives us reason to look beyond a reputation for playing domineering women.
Fi1m perspective
In Atlantic City (1980), Kate Reid's Grace helps keep Burt Lancaster from being the only person who matters. His ageing petty crook, Lou, wants affection, and Louis Malle's crime romance makes that wanting painfully clear. Reid gives the film someone who is not simply there to admire him. We were grateful for that resistance: the fondness surrounding Lou can otherwise soften too much of the danger. It is a good place to begin with an actor whose supporting roles so often involved women described as difficult.
Reid's film debut, This Property Is Condemned (1966), cast her as Hazel Starr, Natalie Wood's mother, despite being only seven years older than Wood. Playing older women became a recurring feature of her screen work. Robert Wise's The Andromeda Strain (1971) gave her Dr Ruth Leavitt, a scientist. Yet the familiar description of Reid as acerbic or domineering needs care: it tells us about the parts she was given without necessarily telling us what she did with them.
Death of a Salesman (1985) offers a useful counterweight. Reid played Linda Loman alongside Dustin Hoffman, reprising her 1984 Broadway performance for television. Her strength there was in making a maternal, long-suffering figure convincing, which broadens the impression left by the harsher roles. The casting habit should not become an excuse to expect the same performance each time.
Back in Atlantic City, the other characters do not disappear into Lancaster's performance. Susan Sarandon's Sally retains an awkwardness with Lou that makes their attraction more interesting than a tidily declared romance, and Reid helps prevent the supporting cast from becoming his appreciative audience. Our reservation about Malle's tenderness remains, but this is strong ensemble work in a film we recommend warmly. Start with Atlantic City, but do not watch only Lancaster.
Biography
Kate Reid (born Daphne Katherine Reid) was a Canadian actress who worked in theatre, film and television. Born in London, England, to Canadian parents and raised in Ontario, she trained at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music before joining the Stratford Festival, where she performed for many years.
She made her Broadway debut in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and received Tony Award nominations for Dylan (1964) and Slapstick Tragedy (1966). On screen she played Grace in Atlantic City (1980), for which she won a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress, and appeared in The Andromeda Strain (1971), Equus (1977) and the television adaptation of Death of a Salesman (1985) as Linda Loman. She had a recurring role as Aunt Lil Trotter in Dallas.
Reid was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1974 and also received a Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Earle Grey Award. She died in Stratford, Ontario, in 1993.
