Anne Jackson was a stage and screen actress best known for her work alongside her late husband, famed actor Eli Wallach. Jackson was an Emmy nominee for her role in an episode of CBS Playhouse, a Tony nominee for her performance in Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night and a Grammy nominee for best spoken-word album, for her contribution to The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets.
Jackson and Wallach appeared opposite one another seven times off-Broadway and 13 times on Broadway, including in the popular 1960s production Luv. The comedy, which ran for more than two years and 900-plus performances, was directed by Mike Nichols and featured the couple opposite Alan Arkin.
Jackson made her debut on Broadway in 1944 in New Moon and also appeared in productions of Promenade, All! and Absent Friends. With Wallach, she appeared in King Henry VIII, A Pound on Demand/Androcles and the Lion, What Every Woman Knows, Major Barbara, The Glass Menagerie, Rhinoceros, The Waltz of the Toreadors, Twice Around the Park and an off-Broadway production of the comedy Down the Garden Paths, written by Anne Meara.
Jackson and Wallach also shared the screen in the films The Tiger Makes Out; How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, starring Dean Martin; Zig Zag; and Nasty Habits. The couple met in 1946 when they were cast in Tennessee Williams’ This Property Is Condemned, and they studied at the Actors Studio together under Lee Strasberg. They married in 1948, and Wallach died in June 2014 at age 98.
Over the course of her career Jackson also often appeared on television, including roles on the series Danger; General Electric Theater; The Untouchables; The Defenders; Gunsmoke; Marcus Welby, M.D.; Rhoda; The Equalizer; The Facts of Life; Highway to Heaven; Law & Order; and ER.
Additionally, she appeared in the films The Journey, with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner; Tall Story, with Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda; The Secret Life of an American Wife, with Walter Matthau; Lovers and Other Strangers, with Gig Young and Bea Arthur; Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra; The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson; and Funny About Love, starring Gene Wilder.
Jackson died April 12, 2016, in New York City. She was 90.
