Tony Winner Alice Ghostley Dies at 81

Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known for playing Esmeralda on TV's Bewitched and Bernice on Designing Women, died on September 21 in Los Angeles after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, according to the Associated Press. She was 81.

Born on August 14, 1926, in Eve, Missouri, Alice Ghostley grew up in Henryetta, Oklahoma and moved to New York after dropping out of the University of Oklahoma. She worked as a theater usher before making her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952, in which she received critical acclaim for singing "The Boston Beguine." "I knew I didn't look like an ingenue," she told The Boston Globe in a 1990 interview. "My nose was too long. I had crooked teeth. I wasn't blond. I knew I looked like a character actress. But I also knew I'd find a way."

Ghostley received a 1963 Tony nomination for various characterizations in the Broadway comedy The Beauty Part and won a Tony two years later for The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Other Broadway credits included Sandhog, all in Lone, Shangri-La, Maybe Tuesday and A Thurber Carnival. Her final Broadway appearance was as Miss Hannigan in Annie.

From 1969 to 1972, Ghostley played the good witch and ditzy housekeeper Esmeralda on TV's Bewitched. She received a 1992 Emmy nomination for her performance as Bernice Clifton on Designing Women. Her film credits include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Graduate, Gator and Grease.

Ghostley, whose actor husband, Felice Orlandi, died in 2003, is survived by her sister, Gladys.