Ellen DeGeneres flanked by her onscreen parents, Alice Hirson and Steven Gilborn, on ‘Ellen.’
Touchstone Television/Courtesy Everett Collection
Alice Hirson, who played a confidante of Barbara Bel Geddes’ Miss Ellie Ewing on Dallas and the mother of Ellen DeGeneres’ character on the comic’s groundbreaking ABC sitcom, has died. She was 95.
Hirson died Friday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, her son David Hirson told The Hollywood Reporter. She had been there for about a year.
From 1969-93, Hirson appeared on such daytime soap operas as CBS’ The Edge of Night as Stephanie Martin; on NBC’s Another World and its spinoff, Somerset, as Marsha Davis; on ABC’s One Life to Live as Eileen Siegel; on ABC’s General Hospital as Mrs. Van Gelder; and on ABC’s Loving as Dr. Lisa Helman.
On the big screen, she played the wife of Colonel Thornbush (Robert Webber), head of the paratrooper unit known as the Thornbirds, in Private Benjamin (1980), and she was the mother of Anthony Edwards’ Gilbert Lowe in Revenge of the Nerds (1984).
Hirson portrayed Mavis Anderson, best friend of Miss Ellie and wife of Punk Anderson (Morgan Woodward), on 26 episodes of CBS’ Dallas from 1982-88. Her real-life husband, Stephen Elliott, played lawyer Scotty Demerest on the show.
Later, she surfaced on 28 installments of Ellen during the sitcom’s 1994-98 run as Lois Morgan. Neither Lois nor her husband, Harold (Steven Gilborn), had a clue that their daughter was gay, which was revealed in April 1997 on “The Puppy Episode.” (DeGeneres had recently come out as a lesbian.)
Hirson was born Alice Corinne Thorsell in Brooklyn on March 10, 1929, and raised in West Hempstead on Long Island. Her mother, May, was a homemaker, and her father, Carl, an electrical engineer.
She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1948 and while appearing in summer stock in New Hampshire was noticed and cast as Lucy Shmeeler in a touring production of On the Town, starring Nancy Walker. (Alice Pearce of Bewitched fame played her character on Broadway and in the 1949 film adaptation.)
In 1952, she appeared on the TV anthology series Hallmark Hall of Fame and married Roger O. Hirson, who went on to collaborate with composer Stephen Schwartz on the hit Broadway musical Pippin (they would divorce in the ’70s).
She made it to Broadway in 1964 in Traveller Without Luggage, then returned for 1966’s The Investigation — set in a courtroom during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, it had debuted in 14 theaters across Germany and London on the same day a year earlier — and 1971’s Solitaire/Double Solitaire.
She moved to the Los Angeles area in 1976.
Hirson later was a regular on the 1992 NBC sitcom Home Fires, and she recurred as Jenny Jackson, mother of Catherine Hicks’ Annie Camden, on The WB-CW drama 7th Heaven from 1996-2006.
Her résumé included guest spots on Maude, The Waltons, Family, Barnaby Jones, Flamingo Road, Barney Miller, Murphy Brown, St. Elsewhere, NYPD Blue and Full House and work in the films The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), Being There (1979), Mass Appeal (1984), Blind Date (1987), The Big Picture (1989), The Glass House (2001) and The Lost (2006).
Hirson met Elliott when they were both in Traveller Without Luggage, and they were married from 1980 until his death in 2005.
David Hirson, a Broadway playwright, said his mom considered herself a stage actress first and foremost, and he marveled how she was able to raise a family while working all those hours on all those soaps.
She is survived by another son, Christopher, a musician, and a grandson, Daniel.
On Instagram, General Hospital star Chris McKenna paid tribute to her.
“We lost a radiant soul and a daytime legend,” he wrote. “Alice Hirson shone her light on this world for 95 glorious years. My family and I were so blessed to have her in our lives however briefly. Unforgettable woman. Her final words were ‘It’s nice to have an audience.’ Thank you, Alice. Good night. Legend.”