Alexis Smith; Tony Winner, Leading Lady

Alexis Smith, Hollywood’s statuesque and aloof but magnetic leading lady of the 1940s and 1950s who made a Tony-winning comeback in the Broadway musical “Follies” at the age of 50, died Wednesday. She was 72.

Miss Smith died of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said actor Craig Stevens, her husband of 49 years.

She was well remembered for her film roles as the wife of composer Cole Porter in “Night and Day” in 1946 and as the wife of the writer Samuel Clemens in “The Adventures of Mark Twain” in 1944. Often cast as a saucy “other woman,” Miss Smith retired from the screen gracefully after two decades.

But in 1971, still beautiful, she returned to the stage to win Broadway’s coveted Tony award as an aging showgirl in “Follies.” The singing and dancing Miss Smith was suddenly in demand for other stage musicals, such as “Platinum,” in which one critic typically described her as “pure gold, pure joy.”

Her musical expertise had been carefully hidden during her early Hollywood years, when she was billed as a patrician, cool, remote heroine.

“At the time, only cute little girls did musicals, and happily, I’ve never been a cute little girl,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1980. “It doesn’t work out so badly now, but when you’re 5 feet 9 in high school, you’d give anything to be a cute little girl.”

Among Miss Smith’s performances in Los Angeles was her elegant yet exuberant portrayal of the madam Miss Mona in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” at the Pantages Theater and later at the Wilshire Theater.

“Miss Smith has far too much class to be mixed up in a shebang like this,” observed former Times theater critic Dan Sullivan, admiring her but panning the show, which he labeled “Texas crude.”

“But that’s the joke,” Sullivan wrote. “Alexis Smith’s breeding counterpoised against the yahoo ways of the rest of the show. And she gives every sign of enjoying it. A real lady fits in anywhere.”

She did enjoy herself, although she candidly told The Times that the 14-month tour of “Whorehouse” was done primarily to earn money. When she took the show to San Francisco, Miss Smith rented a bus and took her co-workers, mostly college students who had never been to California, on a tour of the wine country.

“We had the best time,” she told The Times.

Miss Smith also won praise for her work in such Broadway dramas as “Summer Brave.”

With her new popularity on the stage, Miss Smith was summoned back to Hollywood. She made Jacqueline Susann’s “Once Is Not Enough” in 1975; “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane” in 1977; “Casey’s Shadow,” which became one of her favorites, in 1978, and “Tough Guys” with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in 1986.

Suddenly in demand for television as well, she appeared in such series as “Dallas” and “Hothouse,” the television film “Marcus Welby, MD--A Holiday Affair,” and the 1990 special, “You’re the Top: The Cole Porter Story.”

Born Gladys Smith on June 8, 1921, in Penticton, Canada, Miss Smith began her acting career as a teen-ager doing summer stock.

After she moved to Los Angeles, she earned her place on Hollywood High School’s roll of distinguished alumni. As a student at Los Angeles City College, she was given the lead role in a college play, “Night of January 16th.” A Warner Bros. talent agent saw her, gave her a screen test and signed her to a contract that kept her at the studio for a decade.

In 1943, she was voted Star of Tomorrow.

“Discipline is second nature with me,” she told The Times in 1974. “I began my career very young. With dancing and singing lessons in addition to going to school, I learned that if I wanted to get things done I had to be organized.”

Miss Smith’s early films included “The Lady With Red Hair” in 1940, “Steel Against the Sky” and “Dive Bomber” in 1941, “Gentleman Jim” in 1942, “The Constant Nymph” in 1943, “The Doughgirls” in 1944, and “The Horn Blows at Midnight,” “Conflict,” “Rhapsody in Blue” and “San Antonio,” all in 1945.

She starred as Nora Nesbitt in “Of Human Bondage” in 1946, and, also for Warners, made “Stallion Road” and “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” in 1947; “The Woman in White,” “The Decision of Christopher Blake,” and “Whiplash,” in 1948, and “South of St. Louis,” “Any Number Can Play,” and “One Last Fling” in 1949.

Free-lancing for various studios during the 1950s, she made “Montana” and “Undercover Girl” in 1950, “Here Comes the Groom” in 1951, “The Turning Point” in 1952, “Split Second” in 1953, “The Eternal Sea” in 1955, “Beau James” in 1957, “This Happy Feeling” in 1958 and “The Young Philadelphians” in 1959.

Stevens, Miss Smith’s only survivor, said services will be private.