Julie Harris, Broadway star, dies at 87

Julie Harris, one of Broadway's most honored performers, whose roles ranged from the flamboyant Sally Bowles in "I Am a Camera" to the reclusive Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst," died yesterday. She was 87.

Harris died at her West Chatham, Mass., home, of congestive heart failure, actress and family friend Francesca James said.

Harris won a record five Tony Awards for best actress in a play, displaying a virtuosity that enabled her to portray an astonishing gallery of women during a theater career that spanned almost 60 years and included such plays as "The Member of the Wedding" (1950), "The Lark" (1955), "Forty Carats" (1968) and "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1972).

She was honored again with a sixth Tony, a special lifetime achievement award in 2002.

Harris had suffered a stroke in 2001. She suffered another stroke in 2010, said James, who had known her about 50 years.

"I'm still in sort of a place of shock," James said. "She was, really, the greatest influence in my life."

Television viewers knew Harris as the free-spirited Lilimae Clements on the prime-time soap opera "Knots Landing." In the movies, she was James Dean's romantic co-star in "East of Eden" (1955), and had rolls in such films as "Requiem for a Heavyweight" (1962), "The Haunting" (1963) and "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967).

Yet Harris' biggest successes have been on stage. "The theater has been my church," the actress once said. "I don't hesitate to say that I found God in the theater."

The 5-foot-4 Harris made her Broadway debut in 1945 in a short-lived play called "It's a Gift." She won her first Tony Award for playing Sally Bowles, the confirmed hedonist in "I Am a Camera." The play later became the stage and screen musical "Cabaret."

In her second Tony-winning performance, Harris played a much more spiritual character, Joan of Arc in Lillian Hellman's adaptation of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark."Her third Tony came for her work in "Forty Carats," a frothy French comedy about an older woman and a younger man.

Harris won her last two Tonys for playing historical figures -- Mary Todd Lincoln in "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" and poet Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst" by William Luce. The latter, a one-woman show, became something of an annuity for Harris, a play she would take around the country at various times in her career.

In 2005, she was one of five performers to receive Kennedy Center honors.

She also won Emmys for performances in two "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentations: "Little Moon of Alban" in 1958 and "Victoria Regina" in 1961.

Harris was married three times. She had one son. Funeral arrangements are pending.