Carmen Mathews

Mathews was born in Philadelphia. She studied first at Bennett Junior College and then in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art^[2] for three semesters. She considered herself to be a "disciple" of Charles Rann Kennedy and Edith Wynne Matthison.^[3] She began her professional acting appearance with the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespearean Company before moving back to the United States.^[1] She described her parts there as "mostly furniture" with a few exceptions.^[3]

Matthews's career made little progress in the United States until the fall of 1938, when she had the lady-in-waiting role in Maurice Evans's company of Hamlet. When Katherine Locke left the role of Ophelia in the Broadway production of Hamlet, Mathews replaced her and continued in that role when the play went on tour.^[3]

Her Shakespearean roles included Ophelia in Hamlet and the Queen in Richard II.^[1] She also starred as Theresa Tapper in the William Roos, Jack Lawrence, and Don Walker 1951 Broadway musical Courtin' Time.^[4] Her film credits include Butterfield 8 (1960), A Rage to Live (1965), Rabbit, Run (1970), Sounder (1972), Top of the Hill (1980) and Daniel (1983). On television she performed on a wide variety of series over a span of four decades. A few of those series include appearances on six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65), as well as roles in a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone, a 1964 episode of The Fugitive,^[5] and a 1972 episode of Cannon. One of her more memorable televised performances is as Colonel Lilian Rayburn on Episode 150 of M*A*S*H. Toward the end of her career, in 1990, she was cast in the Last Best Year with Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters.

In 1975, Mathews set up and ran a residential summer camp for disadvantaged children on her 100-acre farm in Redding, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]} Toward the end of her life, Mathews, a passionate environmentalist, made a perpetual donation of her 100-acre New Pond Farm to the Redding Land Trust,^[6] to ensure that it would retain its woods, fields, pond and marsh. The United Nations Association of the United States of America named Mathews one of Connecticut's outstanding women in 1987.^[7][1]

Mathews died at her farm in Redding, Connecticut in 1995, aged 84, from undisclosed causes.^[1]