IN MEMORIUM: Alice Drummond, 1928 – 2016
Alice Drummond, the veteran character actor who portrayed the frightened librarian in the original Ghostbusters (1984), has passed away.
Ms. Drummond was born in 1928 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. She went to Pembroke College (Brown University), where she graduated in 1950.
She began appearing as a character actor in 1959, performing on stage in a production of Lysistrata. 1967 saw her take the role of Nurse Jackson in the cult favorite Dark Shadows. In 1970, she was nominated for a Tony for Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for The Chinese and Dr. Fish, a one-act play by Murray Schisgal.
She continued to go back and forth between the stage and screen until about 1984, the same year she appeared in Ghostbusters. In the meantime, she made appearances on various TV movies, soap operas, and theatrical releases.
Her work seems to have been mostly comedy and drama, the only other genre roles of note being a part in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, the not-quite-science-fiction Synechdoche, New York, and the thriller After.Life.
She died Wednesday due to complication from a fall at her home in the Bronx. She was 88.
(Kelly Luck’s uncle thought he was Saint Malo. Her other SciFi4Me work can be read here.)
