Camilla Carr, the cult-favorite horror actress who stirred national outrage with her infamous AIDS-era storyline on Designing Women, has died at 83.
Carr passed away Wednesday, Feb. 4, at her home in El Paso, Texas, after complications from Alzheimer’s disease and a dislocated hip, her son Caley O’Dwyer confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Carr carved out a fascinating, often chilling career beginning in the early 1970s, appearing in titles like A Bullet for Pretty Boy, Don’t Look in the Basement, and Logan’s Run. Her work with cult director S.F. Brownrigg became a calling card — she first played an unstable patient who murders a nurse, and later returned for two more of his grindhouse favorites: Poor White Trash II in 1974 and Keep My Grave Open in 1977.
She also logged 34 episodes on NBC’s long-running soap Another World as Rita Connelly, and frequently shared the screen with her first husband, actor Hugh Feagin, whom she met during her Dallas theater days. Carr later married Oscar-winning screenwriter Edward Anhalt before their 1976 split.
But for millions of TV viewers, Carr’s most unforgettable moment came in October 1987, when she guest-starred on Designing Women as Mrs. Imogene Salinger — a woman whose shocking comments about gay men dying of AIDS set off national debate.
Her character delivered one of the series’ most incendiary lines, telling Julia Sugarbaker (played by Dixie Carter) that AIDS was “killing all the right people.” The episode, inspired by creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason’s own mother’s death from a transfusion-related AIDS infection, earned Bloodworth-Thomason an Emmy nomination and became one of the show’s most talked-about moments.
“It was a sh—y character, but she did a great job for an important cause,” O’Dwyer said of his mother’s performance.
Carr went on to appear on Falcon Crest and later starred in a Los Angeles Theatre Center production of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. After nearly 30 years away from cameras, she returned one last time in 2015 for Don’t Look in the Basement 2, directed by Anthony Brownrigg — the son of her longtime collaborator.
Carr leaves behind a complicated, fascinating legacy spanning grindhouse cinema, daytime soaps, and one of the most provocative sitcom episodes of the 1980s.
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