Bethel Leslie

Who was Bethel Leslie?

Bethel Leslie was an American theatre, film, and television actress and a screenwriter.

Born in New York, New York, Leslie was discovered by George Abbott, who cast her in the play Snafu in 1944. Over the next four decades she appeared in a number of Broadway productions, including Goodbye, My Fancy, The Time of the Cuckoo, Inherit the Wind, Catch Me If You Can, and Long Day's Journey Into Night, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.

In 1950, Leslie was cast as Cornelia Otis Skinner in The Girls, a television series based on the author's Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. She departed the show after two months to appear with Helen Hayes in the play The Wisteria Trees, adapted from Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard by Joshua Logan. She frequently guested on the many anthology series popular in the early to mid-1950s, such as Studio One and Playhouse 90. She appeared with Ronald W. Reagan and Stafford Repp in the 1960 episode "The Way Home" of CBS's The DuPont Show with June Allyson.

Leslie made three guest appearances on Perry Mason, and was featured as Perry's client in all three episodes. In 1958 she played Janet Morris in "The Case of the Fugitive Nurse," and Evelyn Girard in "The Case of the Purple Woman." In 1960 she played Sylvia Sutton in "The Case of the Wayward Wife."