Dorrie (Dorriet) Kavanaugh

MANY will remember actress Dorrie Kavanaugh as Kathy Craig in the American soap opera One Life To Live, or for her glamorous appearance as Christine Van Deerlin opposite James Garner in the ‘South By Southeast’ episode of The Rockford Files. I was at university in the early 1980s studying American immigration when I first encountered her in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 Oscar-nominated independent debut film Hester Street, in which she delivered an outwardly brash but, in fact, highly nuanced performance as dancer Mamie Fein. Little did I realise that she had also paid her dues on Broadway, graced television's soapland during the late 1970s and then gone on to pursue a new career as an opera singer, before tragically succumbing to cancer in December of 1983.

Dorrie Kavanaugh, later sometimes known as Dorriet Kavanna, was born on July 12, 1945 in the city of Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, USA. By the late 1960s she was appearing both on and off Broadway (where she debuted as Delia in Fire! in 1969), having already appeared in Gothic TV fantasy Dark Shadows in 1967. This would be the start of a raft of TV drama dates including The Edge Of Night, The Guiding Light, One Life To Live, Great Performances, Rafferty ('The Cutting Edge') and Ryan’s Hope.

She also had a memorable role as Christine Van Deerlin in the 'South By Southeast' episode of The Rockford Files in 1978, and was later reunited with Hester Street co-star Steven Keats in the frontier miniseries The Awakening Land with Elizabeth Montgomery, Hal Holbrook and William H. Macy. Beyond the series format, she starred opposite Ed Asner in the TV movie The Life And Assassination Of A Kingfish ( 1977), the true-life story of the murder of Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, and with Carrie Snodgress and Earl Holliman in the marital drama The Solitary Man (1979). However, her real career tour de force was on the big screen in 1975's Hester Street, writer and director Joan Micklin Silver’s sparkling independent portait of New York’s Jewish immigrant ghetto in the last years of the 19th century.

In Hester Street, Dorrie plays dancer Mamie Fein who is in love with sweatshop machinist Yaakov/Jake (Steven Keats). The pair plan to marry and open a dancing school but, unbeknownst to Mamie, Jake has a family in Russia. Things get complicated when Jake’s father dies, and his wife Gitl and son Yosele travel to join him in New York. Neither Jake's wife nor his intended are enamoured of the situation, and it’s not long before sparks begin to fly. It was Carol Kane who got the Oscar nomination, and she was very good (as was Doris Roberts as Jake’s no-nonsense landlady), but Dorrie Kavanaugh was also more than deserving of praise in the role of the hapless machinist and would-be dance instructor’s paramour.

The end of the decade saw a change of direction for Dorrie. She had often said music was her first love, and after editing the 1978 Listen To Us report from the Children’s Express newspaper column which she had co-founded, the following year she embarked on a new career as an opera singer. Indeed, she had already made her classical singing debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in May 1974, when New York Times music critic Robert Sherman had lauded her ‘insinuating, gypsy‐like concept’ performance of Ravel's Piece En Forme De Habanera as ‘unconventional but exciting’. She went on to win the best light soprano prize at Liceu Opera Barcelona’s 17th Tenor Vinas competition in 1979 and, as Dorriet Kavanaugh or Kavanna, divided her time between Verona, Italy, and New York City, playing many concerts throughout Europe including a devastating live performance of Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet on Italian TV channel Rai 3, which can be seen on YouTube A.Thomas .: Hamlet- Soprano Dorriet Kavanna. (youtube.com)

However, Dorrie's triumph was tragically short-lived. Having married Icelandic opera singer Kristján Jóhannsson, she was later diagnosed with cancer and died on December 31, 1983, in Bonn, West Germany, where she had gone for treatment. She was buried in her husband’s home town of Akureyri in Iceland, her memorial stating simply “Dorriet Kavanna, Söngkona (songstress) D. 31 Des 1983”. A memorial service was held at the Carnegie Recital Hall on January 23 1984. Dorrie Kavanaugh was 38 years old when she died. Dorrie Kavanaugh - actress

Feature films

Hester Street (1975) Mamie Fein TV movies The Solitary Man (1979) Barbara Sellers The Life and Assassination of the Kingfish (1977) Alice Grosjean

TV mini-series The Awakening Land (1978) Mistress Bartram

TV drama series and soap operas The Rockford Files (1978) Christine Van Deerlin Ryan's Hope (1977) Martha McKee #2 Rafferty (1977) Ellen McKay

Great Performances: Paradise Lost (1974) Pearl

One Life to Live (1972-1976) Kathy Craig Lord #4

Guiding Light (1970) Charlotte Waring Fletcher Bauer #2 The Edge of Night (1970) Gloria ‘Tango’ Humphries #1 Dark Shadows (1967-68) Phylliss Wicke