Mary Janice Rule was an American actress "at her most convincing playing embittered, neurotic socialites".
Early life
Janice Rule was born in Norwood, Ohio, to parents of Irish origin. Her father was a dealer in industrial diamonds. She began dancing at the Chez Paree nightclub at age 15, which paid for ballet lessons, and was a dancer in the 1949 Broadway production of Miss Liberty. Rule also studied acting at the Chicago Professional School.
Career
She was pictured on the cover of Life magazine on January 8, 1951 as being someone to watch in the entertainment industry. Given a contract by Warner Bros., her first credited screen role was as Virginia in Goodbye, My Fancy, which featured Joan Crawford in the lead. The established star belittled the younger woman, making Rule's work on the film difficult, although Crawford years later wrote a letter of apology to Rule for treating her badly on this film. Rule's Warner contract was allowed to lapse after only two films. She was troubled by the attitude toward women's beauty at the studios in the early 1950s: "Because I was afraid of being robbed of my individuality, I fought with the makeup people, the hairdressers, and I didn't understand problems of the publicity department," she was reported as saying in 1957. Rule was in the original 1953 Broadway cast of William Inge's Picnic, whose company also included Paul Newman in his Broadway debut. This commitment led her to turn down the role ultimately played by Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront. "I knew I couldn't shoot in a movie all day and work on a stage at night and do my best in both," she was quoted as saying by Hedda Hopper of the Los Angeles Times in 1966. Among her other Broadway shows were The Flowering Peach, The Happiest Girl in the World and Michael V. Gazzo's Night Circus, a 1958 production which lasted for only a week, but introduced Rule to Ben Gazzara, who became her third husband. Her other films in the 1950s included A Woman's Devotion, the Western Gun for a Coward and Bell, Book and Candle, in which she played the fiancée who loses publisher 'Shep' Henderson to the spell-casting witch Gillian Holroyd. On television, she appeared in the Checkmate episode "The Mask of Vengeance", where she played Elena Nardos, the roommate of Cloris Leachman's character, Marilyn Parker. She was also in The Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare as a Child." She appeared as different characters in three episodes of Route 66. She acted as both Barbara Webb and Barbara Wells with David Janssen in two episodes of The Fugitive entitled "Wife Killer" and "The Walls of Night". She also had a major role as Nancy Reade in "Three Bells to Perdido", the debut episode of the Richard Boone western Have Gun – Will Travel. Rule also starred, second billing to Yul Brynner, in the 1964 film western tale Invitation to a Gunfighter. Among her later film roles were Emily Stewart in The Chase, Sheila Sommers in The Ambushers, Burt Lancaster's bitter ex-lover in The Swimmer, Willie in Robert Altman's 3 Women, journalist Kate Newman in Costa Gavras' political thrillerMissing, and Kevin Costner's mother in American Flyers.
Personal life
Rule had a brief engagement to Farley Granger in 1956. They had appeared in the Broadway playThe Carefree Tree in 1955. Next followed a relationship with Ralph Meeker; Meeker had played Hal in Picnic. Rule was briefly married, during 1955, to television and film writer N. Richard Nash. Her second marriage was to television and film writer Robert Thom in 1956; they had one daughter, Kate Thom, before divorcing in 1961. Her last marriage was to actor Ben Gazzara in 1961, having one daughter, Elizabeth Gazzara, together before their divorce in 1982. During the 1960s she became interested in psychoanalysis. She began her formal studies in 1973, specializing in treating her fellow actors, and received her PhD 10 years later from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute in Los Angeles. She practiced in New York and Los Angeles, and continued to act occasionally until her death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003. She was cremated after her death. She was survived by her daughters, Kate Thom Fitzgerald and film editor Elizabeth Gazzara, both of Brooklyn; her sisters, Kathleen Rule of Oceano, California; Ann Nader of San Marcos, California; and Emily Forbes of Las Cruces, New Mexico; and her brother Ralph of Mallorca, Spain.
By an odd coincidence, Rule appeared in the first or second episode of four long-running television series: Have Gun – Will Travel episode 1; Route 66episode 2; The Streets of San Francisco episode 2; and, Barnaby Jones episode 2.
