Louise Platt

Louise Platt (August 3, 1915 – September 6, 2003) was an American theater, film, and television actress whose career spanned over three decades, from the mid‑1930s to the early 1960s. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, she spent much of her childhood in Annapolis, Maryland, where her father served as a dental surgeon in the United States Navy, a background that exposed her to a disciplined yet itinerant lifestyle. Platt’s first professional experience came in stock theater in Suffern, New York, and she quickly broadened her repertoire by performing in regional productions from Maine to Virginia to Minnesota, honing a versatility that would later define her screen work. Her Broadway debut arrived in 1936 with Promise and continued with a string of credits including Spring Dance, A Room in Red and White, In Clover, Five Alarm Waltz (1941), Anne of the Thousand Days (1948) alongside Rex Harrison, and The Traitor (1949). In 1938 she transitioned to Hollywood, and her most memorable film role was as the officer’s pregnant wife in John Ford’s classic Stagecoach (1939), a part that cemented her place in cinema history. After a brief but prolific stint in movies—appearing in roughly half a dozen films—she returned to the New York stage in 1942 before embracing the emerging medium of television in the 1950s, with appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a recurring role as Ruth Holden on the soap opera The Guiding Light. Platt’s personal life was marked by two marriages: first to theater director Jed Harris, a union famously marred by abuse, and later to director Stanley Gould in 1950, with whom she remained until his death; each marriage produced a daughter. She passed away at a hospital in Greenport, New York, on September 6, 2003, at the age of 88, leaving behind a legacy of diverse performances across stage, screen, and TV.