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Actress Louise Lasser, Mary Hartman Star, Dies at 87

7/9/2026

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Summary

Story summary

Louise Lasser died at her Manhattan home at age 87.
She played the satirical housewife on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which aired from January 1976 to July 1977.
She married filmmaker Woody Allen, starred in his Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972), appeared in Requiem for a Dream, and trained with Sanford Meisner while understudying Barbra Streisand in a 1962 musical.

History

Historical Context

In 1976 the satirical soap *Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman* premiered, casting Louise Lasser—trained by Sanford Meisner and fresh from a Broadway debut—to parody domestic melodrama. The show’s absurd tone echoed Norman Lear’s earlier TV experiments and preceded Lasser’s controversial July 24, 1976 appearance on *Saturday Night Live*. Its bold blend of satire and soap set a template for later genre-mixing comedies.

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Story summary

Louise Lasser died at her Manhattan home at age 87.
She played the satirical housewife on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which aired from January 1976 to July 1977.
She married filmmaker Woody Allen, starred in his Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972), appeared in Requiem for a Dream, and trained with Sanford Meisner while understudying Barbra Streisand in a 1962 musical.

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