Carrie Nye, 69; Versatile Actress, Wife of Dick Cavett

Carrie Nye, a Tony Award-nominated actress who occasionally appeared on television and in films but remained best known for her stage work, which ranged from musicals to Shakespeare, has died. She was 69.

Nye died of lung cancer Friday at her home in Manhattan, said her husband, comedian and TV talk-show host Dick Cavett.

Cavett, who attributed his wife's cancer to smoking, told The Times on Monday that "she tried to quit a couple of times" but smoking "became part of her early persona; perhaps based on Tallulah Bankhead or Marlene Dietrich."

The combination of what Cavett described as "her Southern-ness, deep voice and a somewhat physical resemblance" to Bankhead resulted in Nye's often being compared with the flamboyant Broadway star.

Cavett said, however, that no one on the street ever mistook his wife for Bankhead until she played her in the 1980 TV movie "The Scarlett O'Hara War," for which Nye earned an Emmy nomination.

The Mississippi-born Nye made her Broadway debut in 1960 in "A Second String." She earned a Tony nomination in 1965 for her role as a society woman in the musical "Half a Sixpence."

She also appeared on Broadway in Ruth Gordon's play "A Very Rich Woman" and a 1980 revival of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," among others. Two of her off-Broadway credits are Michael Cacoyannis' 1963 production of "The Trojan Women" and a 1972 production of Tom Stoppard's "The Real Inspector Hound."

Among her film credits are "The Group," "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," and "Creepshow." On television, she did a 1984 stint on "The Guiding Light."

"She really was an extraordinary actress," said writer-producer Ellen Weston, who first knew Nye when they were young actresses at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., around 1960.

"I remember when she did Blanche in 'A Streetcar Named Desire,' " Weston told The Times on Monday. "Even as a kid, her understanding of that character was extraordinary, so beyond the life knowledge of a 21-year-old."

Offstage, Nye has been described as "wickedly witty," a phrase that Cavett said best sums up his wife's humor.

"To me it does," he said, "and it probably would for a few victims of it."

A prime example of his wife's wit, he said, was a 1973 essay she wrote for Time magazine about working with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the critically blasted two-part TV-movie "Divorce His Divorce Hers."