Dixie Carter, 1939–2010

The actress who oozed Southern charm

As the star of the CBS sitcom Designing Women, Dixie Carter struck a deal with the show’s liberal creators, Clinton stalwarts Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Each time Carter’s character, interior designer Julia Sugarbaker, took a liberal stand that clashed with Carter’s own conservative orientation, Carter was allowed to indulge her love of singing on the show. It was a fitting compromise for a woman who as a child had dreamed of performing opera and who later enjoyed a career in cabaret.

Born in McLemoresville, Tenn., Dixie Virginia Carter studied singing and learned piano, trumpet, and harmonica when she was a young girl, said Variety. After graduating from Memphis State University, she made her stage debut in a 1960 Memphis production of Carousel. Three years later, in New York, she joined a Joseph Papp production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. She would go on to forge a career “in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent Southern women.”

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