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<\/a>In the span of five days, two talented Mainers gave their final bows and went to that great sound stage in the sky. Aren\u2019t they now playing wonderfully against each other, even if they never happened to share the limelight here on earth?<\/p>\nPhyllis Thaxter <\/strong>(November 1921-August 12, 2012) starred with Van Johnson and Spencer Tracy in the 1944 wartime classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo<\/em>.<\/p>\n When we interviewed Thaxter a decade ago, she said she grew up on 314 Danforth Street in the West End. \u201cWe also lived at 17 Storer Street, which became part of Waynflete before it burned to the ground. I went to Butler, Waynflete, and Deering High. I\u2019d have graduated with the Class of \u201938 had I not gone to Montreal and on to an acting career.\u201d<\/p>\n And what a career. Her triumphs include Springfield Rifle<\/em>, with Gary Cooper; The Sea of Grass<\/em>, with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy; and Jim Thorpe, All American<\/em>, opposite Burt Lancaster. Praised for her \u201cbright, darting eyes and her lithe, expressive body,\u201d Thaxter went on to star with John Garfield (The Breaking Point<\/em>, 1950), James Cagney, Gene Kelly, Robert Ryan, Cornell Wilde, Ronald Reagan (She\u2019s Working Her Way Through College<\/em>, 1952). Wasn\u2019t it wonderful when she channeled the dark side of marriage in a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone<\/em>? She was in no fewer than nine episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Present<\/em>s, some of which feature her playing against the grain (she was relentlessly typecast as an ingenue or dewy-eyed newlywed on the silver screen). After all but retiring, she delighted moviegoers by turning up as Christopher Reeve\u2019s mom in Superman<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cBut my deepest connections are to Maine,\u201d she told us. In fact, her first crush was with a Maine island less than half a mile from shore: \u201cSummers we lived on Cushing, in a John Calvin Stevens house with a lovely wraparound porch right up on the hill. You can still see it if you\u2019re on a boat coming into port.\u201d<\/p>\n Another of her crushes was revealed just weeks ago. At the dawn of her career, working on Broadway as an understudy for Lynn Fontanne, she fell in love with fellow castmember Montgomery Clift. As Thaxter\u2019s daughter Skye Aubrey told The New York Time<\/em>s, \u201cThey were very much in love. They talked about getting married. They were planning on it. Then he found out he was gay.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a trivia question: Did you know that before she became Mrs. Gilbert Lea, Phyllis Thaxter was married to James Thomas Aubrey Jr., the president of CBS and MGM?<\/em><\/p>\n Every arts organization in Maine owes a debt of gratitude to Fritzi Cohen<\/strong> (February 15, 1923-August 7, 2012). A powerful stage and screen presence, Cohen also swept audiences away as \u201cNew England\u2019s first on-air drama critic,\u201d according to WCSH-TV, the station that featured her segments from the 1960s and forward, and was an enthusiastic early supporter of PortOpera.<\/p>\n Daring to dream that a serious actress could live in Maine and advance her career, Fritzi Jane Courtney (as she\u2019s listed on IMDB.com) charmed directors (notably Steven Spielberg in Jaws<\/em>; see \u201cSwimming with the Sharks,\u201d Summerguide 2012) and knew how to hit her audiences where they lived. As she told us in her low, seductive voice during a visit to our office earlier this summer, looking striking in a snappy red and black ensemble at 89, \u201cI\u2019d just been working on Lenny<\/em> at Charles Playhouse in Boston when I got the call to audition. I was exhausted. I asked what\u2019s it about. \u2018A big fish.\u2019 Who\u2019s directing it? \u2018Some kid.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n