Cara Williams

Cara Williams (June 29, 1925 – December 9, 2021), born Bernice Kamiat in Brooklyn, New York, was an American actress best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance in the film The Defiant Ones (1958) and her leading roles in the CBS sitcoms Pete and Gladys (1960–1962) and The Cara Williams Show (1964–1965). A redheaded performer with a perky screen presence, she began her career as a child actor in the 1940s, providing voice work for animated shorts and appearing in supporting film roles before achieving prominence in dramatic and comedic parts during the 1950s and 1960s.

Williams made her film debut in Happy Land (1943) under contract with 20th Century Fox, transitioning from bit parts in movies like Boomerang! (1947) to more substantial roles in television anthologies such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Suspense by the mid-1950s. Her breakthrough came with the emotionally charged role of a widowed mother searching for her son in The Defiant Ones, directed by Stanley Kramer, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 31st Academy Awards and highlighted her versatility beyond light comedy. She received further acclaim for her television work, including an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Series (Lead) for Pete and Gladys, where she played the sharp-witted wife of Harry Morgan's character. Later credits included guest spots on Rhoda (1974–1975) and her final film appearance in One Man Jury (1978), after which she largely retired from acting.

In her personal life, Williams was first married to Alan Gray from 1945 to 1947, with whom she had a daughter, Cathy Gray; she was then married to actor John Drew Barrymore Jr. from 1952 to 1959, with whom she had a son, John Blyth Barrymore, and later to businessman Asher Dann from 1964 until his death in 2018. Of Romanian-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish descent, she passed away in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 96.