Elizabeth Franz, Tony-Winning ‘Death of a Salesman’ Actress, Dies at 84

Elizabeth Franz, who received a Tony Award for her unusual, forceful turn as the wife of Brian Dennehy’s Willy Loman in a 50th anniversary production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, has died. She was 84.

Franz died Nov. 4 at her home in Woodbury, Connecticut, after a battle with cancer, her husband, screenwriter Christopher Pelham, told The New York Times.

Franz also landed Tony noms in 1983 and 2002, respectively, for portraying Kate Jerome (Matthew Broderick’s mom) in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and the youngest of four sisters (Piper Laurie, Frances Sternhagen and Estelle Parsons were her siblings) in a revival of Paul Osborn’s Morning’s at Seven.

Plus, she sparkled — and won an Obie Award in 1980 — for her performance as the strict nun in Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.

Franz and Dennehy had started out with Death of a Salesman at the Goodman Theater in Chicago before they arrived on Broadway at the Eugene O’Neill in February 1999.

Rather than play Linda Loman as a beaten-down wife, Franz took a far more assertive, outraged approach and added an element of sexuality to the role.

“You can say anything because you know in the end you’re going be in that bed, curled up and having the most wonderful conversations,” she told the Times in 1999. “When she’s curled up in his arms and she’s singing to him — you can’t tell me that isn’t a very sexual moment.”

Miller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949 for the play, praised Franz in the Times piece, saying that she “has discovered in the role the basic underlying powerful protectiveness, which comes out as fury, and that in the past, in every performance I know of, was simply washed out.”

She and Dennehy — who also won a Tony for his work — then appeared in a 2000 production for Showtime, with both receiving Emmy nominations.

Elizabeth Jean Frankovitch was born on June 18, 1941, in Akron, Ohio. Her father, Joseph, worked in a tire factory in town, and her mother, Harriet, was a part-time waitress who was mentally ill and would disappear for months at a time, she told the Times.

She graduated from Copley High School in Ohio and from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in 1962, appeared often in summer productions at the Dorset Playhouse in Vermont and made it to Broadway for the first time in 1967 in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

After working with Simon in Brighton Beach Memoirs, he hired her to step in for Linda Lavin as the strong-willed Kate in 1987 in Broadway Bound, the third play in his autobiographical “Eugene Trilogy.”

Franz had auditioned for the role of Linda opposite Dustin Hoffman in the 1984 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman (Kate Reid was hired) and played the part alongside Hal Holbrook in a touring production before teaming up with Dennehy.

Frank also appeared on Broadway in The Cherry Orchard, The Octette Bridge Club, The Cemetery Club, Getting Married, Uncle Vanya and, in 2010, The Miracle Worker. She said that when she was hired for a role, she would write “a novel” about her character.

Her onscreen résumé included the films Sabrina (1995), The Secret of My Success (1987), Jacknife (1989), School Ties (1992), The Substance of Fire (1996) and Christmas With the Kranks (2004) and guest-star TV turns on Dear John, Roseanne, Sisters, Gilmore Girls, Law & Order: SVU and Grey’s Anatomy.

In addition to Pelham, survivors include her brother, Joe.

Her first husband was prolific character actor Edward Binns (12 Angry Men, North by Northwest, Fail Safe). They often appeared onstage together and were married from 1983 until his death in 1990 at age 74.