Marcia Rodd, a Tony Award nominee who starred in the comedy “Little Murders” and played Bea Arthur’s daughter in the pilot for the television series “Maude,” died on Dec. 27. She was 87.
Rodd starred as Bobbi in Neil Simon’s 1969 play, “The Last of the Red Hot Lovers.”
She co-starred with Elliott Gould in the 1971 dark comedy, “Little Murders."
Rodd appeared as Carol, the daughter of Maude Findlay (Arthur) in a March 1972 episode of “All in the Family,” which served as the pilot for “Maude.”
For the series “Maude,” which debuted in the fall of 1972, Rodd, who was reportedly unwilling to commit to a television series, was replaced by Adrienne Barbeau.
Rodd relented in 1976 and appeared in “The Dumplings,” but that series lasted only 10 episodes.
Three years later, she played Eileen Brennan’s neighbor in 13 Queens Boulevard, a series that was canceled after nine episodes.
She also had small roles in other TV series including “Murder, She Wrote,” “21 Jump Street,” “Gimme a Break,” “M*A*S*H” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Rodd was born in Lyons, Kansas, on July 8, 1938, and was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Wichita, Kansas. She studied drama at Northwestern University.
In 1964, she starred as Dorothy in a televised stage production of “The Wizard of Oz” and made her Broadway debut as a replacement actress in the musical “Oh, What a Lovely War.”
Rodd received a Tony Award nomination in 1973 for best actress in a musical for “Shelter.” Other work on Broadway included “I’m Not Rappaport,” and she also appeared in national tours of “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1989 and 1994.