Actress Barbara Rush, known for her work on All My Children, 7th Heaven and more, has died at the age of 97.
Her daughter, senior Fox News correspondent Claudia Cowan, confirmed Rush’s death to the outlet on Sunday, March 31. “My wonderful mother passed away peacefully at 5:28 this evening. I was with her this morning and know she was waiting for me to return home safely to transition,” Cowan said. “It’s fitting she chose to leave on Easter as it was one of her favorite holidays and now, of course, Easter will have a deeper significance for me and my family.”
Rush’s on-camera career spanned decades. In 1954, she won the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Female for her role in the sci-fi film It Came from Outer Space. Throughout her time in Hollywood, she starred alongside leading men Dean Martin, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas and more.
Rush shifted to television at the end of the 1960s, appearing on shows Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, The Fugitive and Ironside, among others. She was featured on every episode of NBC’s Flamingo Road from 1980 to 1982 and landed roles on Knight Rider, The Love Boat, Magnum P.I. and more mainstays of the era.
Before Rush starred as Nola Orsini on the ABC soap opera All My Children in the 1990s, she was recognized as Marsha Russell on Peyton Place. The half-hour soap aired from 1964 to 1969. (Rush made her Peyton Place debut in 1968.)
To a younger generation of TV lovers, Rush is known for playing Ruth Camden on 7th Heaven. Her recurring character was the mother of Eric Camden (Stephen Collins) and grandmother of his seven children: Matt (Barry Watson), Mary (Jessica Biel), Lucy (Beverley Mitchell), Simon (David Gallagher), Ruthie (Mackenzie Rosman), Sam and David (Nikolas and Lorenzo Brino).
Rush was also a celebrated theater star, winning a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for the one-woman show A Woman of Independent Means, in which she played a character at different phases of her life from age 7 to 70. She toured productions of Private Lives, Steel Magnolias and more.
Rush was married three times. She wed actor Jeffrey Hunter in 1950, splitting five years later in 1955. The Can’t Stop the Music star went on to marry publicist Warren Cowan in 1959, divorcing in 1969. After meeting at an Engelbert Humperdinck concert, Rush married sculptor Jim Gruzalski in 1970. The twosome called it quits three years later.
Along with daughter Claudia, whom she shared with her second husband, Rush welcomed son Christopher Hunter with her first husband.
