I’m very sorry about the passing of Melinda Dillon, who was quite the vulnerable mainstay in several stand-out films from the ’70s,’80s and ’90s — Slap Shot, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Absence of Malice, Bound for Glory, A Christmas Story, The Prince of Tides. I somehow never read about her having landed a Tony nomination in 1963 (when she was 23 or 24) for her performance in the Sandy Dennis role in the original B’way stage production of Edward Albee‘s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. This isn’t a profound observation, but the way Dillon called out for her young son (Cary Guffey) in CE3K — “Bahhahhhrrreeee!” — has been lodged in my memory ever since.
