Sally Brophy


Sally Cullen Brophy was a Broadway and television actress and college theatre arts professor.

Early years

Brophy was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Cullen Brophy. Her father was a rancher, Brophy was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and was one of seven children. She was active in dramatics at Sacred Heart Convent in Menlo Park, California and attended College of New Rochelle. Additional experience came from her work as a summer apprentice at Westport, Connecticut's Theatre Guild. She studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and then pursued a career on Broadway.

Stage

Brophy acted in the Phoenix Little Theatre. She worked in Private Lives with Tallulah Bankhead. In 1951 she was an understudy in Second Threshold. In 1954–1955, she starred as the grown-up "Wendy" in Peter Pan.

Television

Brophy starred as Julie Fielding in Follow Your Heart on NBC-TV in 1953. In 1954, she guest starred on an episode of the CBS crime drama, The Public Defender, starring Reed Hadley and in the episode of Medic entitled "I Climb the Stairs". The next year, she appeared in the debut episode of Code 3 and in the episodes "In Nebraska" and "The Long Road to Tucson" in the roles of Lucy Miller and Sister Michael, respectively, of NBC's western anthology television series Frontier.
Her other television appearances included the Rod Cameron syndicated series State Trooper and in the Frank Lovejoy 1957–1958 NBC detective series, Meet McGraw.
In 1958, she portrayed Annie O'Connell, co-starring in the NBC western series Buckskin, a summer replacement series for The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. Brophy played widow Annie O'Connell, who ran a boarding house in the fictitious "Old West" town of Buckskin, Montana. The other stars were Tom Nolan, as Annie's ten-year-old son Jody, who was the narrator, and Mike Road, as Marshal Tom Sellers. Buckskin ran for thirty-nine episodes from 1958 to 1959. Brophy and Nolan also appeared together in the March 5, 1959, episode of The Ford Show.
After Buckskin, Brophy had several additional guest roles, her last having been in 1965 on Richard Crenna's CBS drama, Slattery's People.

Family

In 1961, Brophy married George Goodman, an investment manager and financial reporter, who later became a best-selling author and TV personality under the pseudonym of "Adam Smith"; he survived her. The couple had two children. When Brophy retired from acting, the couple moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

Teaching career

Brophy joined the faculty of Rider University in nearby Lawrenceville, where she taught theater arts. She also directed student productions at Princeton University.

Death

She died in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of seventy-eight of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.