Julie Harris has died at the age of 87. She was a veteran of film and television, and some three dozen plays on Broadway, for which she won an unprecedented five Tony Awards.

“Joan of Arc lived so that Julie Harris might do this play,” one critic wrote of her performance in The Lark. She was starry-eyed Frankie in “A Member of The Wedding” and a witch in Macbeth; she played Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” and Emily Dickinson in “The Belle of Amherst” as well as Mary Todd Lincoln and Isak Dinesen and even that good-time girl Sally Bowles.

List of plays in which she appeared on Broadway

The Gin Game 1997
The Glass Menagerie 1995
Lucifer’s Child 1991
Mixed Couples 1981
Break a Leg 1979
The Belle of Amherst 1976
In Praise of Love 1974 – 1975
The au Pair Man 1973 –  1974
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln 1972 – 1973
Voices 1972
And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little 1971
Forty Carats 1968-1970
Skyscraper 1965 – 1966
Ready When You Are, C.B.! 1964-1065
Marathon ’33 1963 – 1964
A Shot in the Dark 1961-1962
Little Moon of Alban 1960
The Warm Peninsula 1959 – 1960
The Country Wife 1957 – 1958
The Lark 1955 – 1956
Mademoiselle Colombe 1954
I Am a Camera 1951-1952
The Member of the Wedding 1950-1951
Montserrat 1949
Magnolia Alley 1949
The Young and Fair 1948-1949
Sundown Beach 1948
Macbeth 1948
Alice in Wonderland 1947
The Playboy of the Western World 1946 – 1947
Oedipus Rex 1946
King Henry IV, Part II 1946
It’s a Gift 1945

Since one of her most celebrated roles was as the poet Emily Dickinson in “The Bell of Amherst” here are some apt poems:

It feels a shame to be Alive
When Men so brave—are dead
One envies the Distinguished Dust
Permitted—such a Head…

…

She lay as if at play
Her life had leaped away—
Intending to return—
But not so soon— …

—

Love is anterior to life
Posterior to death
Initial of creation, and
The exponent of breath.

AP obituary

Ben Brantley’s personal and professional connection to Julie Harris, which left him trembling.