
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993                   TAG: 9306100006
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Medium

SCREEN AND STAGE STAR ALEXIS SMITH DIES AT 72

Alexis Smith, the statuesque actress who co-starred with Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn in the 1940s and '50s and made a comeback in a Tony Award-winning performance in "Follies," died Wednesday. She was 72.

Smith died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from cancer, her husband Craig Stevens said.

She was still in college when a talent scout spotted her and got her a screen test for Warner Bros. Between 1940 and 1959, she appeared as lead or second lead in a string of films such as "Dive Bomber," "The Doughgirls" and "The Woman in White."

Among her leading men were Gable ("Any Number Can Play"), Grant ("Night and Day"), Ronald Reagan ("Stallion Road"), Flynn ("San Antonio," among others) and Jack Benny ("The Horn Blows at Midnight").

But the high point of her career came later, on stage and a decade after she had largely retired from the screen. In 1971, Smith scored a personal triumph in "Follies," an ambitious Stephen Sondheim musical centered on the reunion of aging showgirls in a soon-to-be-demolished Broadway theater.

The performance won her a Tony Award - Broadway's equivalent of the Oscars - as best actress in a musical.

Among the show's highlights: Smith's biting rendition of "Could I Leave You?" and her "Story of Lucy and Jessie."

She was in several film biographies: "Night and Day" (Cole Porter); "The Adventures of Mark Twain"; and "Rhapsody in Blue" (George Gershwin).

More recently, Smith appeared on Broadway in another big musical, "Platinum," in 1978.

Starting in 1984, she had a small recurring role in the popular TV prime-time soap "Dallas." In 1988, she was in the short-lived TV drama "Hothouse."

Note: A different version ran in the Metro edition.

by CNB