Katherine Locke; Film and Broadway Actress

Katherine Locke, stage and film actress who established herself in Broadway’s “Having a Wonderful Time” and was critically acclaimed as Shakespeare’s Ophelia, has died. She was 85.

Miss Locke, who lived in Sherman Oaks with her husband, pioneering radio writer Norman Corwin, died Tuesday in Los Angeles of a brain tumor.

After a slow start in acting, during which she took such forgettable roles as an offstage dog barking, Miss Locke became the toast of Broadway’s 1937 season when she starred opposite John Garfield in the Arthur Kober comedy “Having a Wonderful Time.”

“This morning,” one enthusiastic drama critic wrote after opening night, “I give you a young girl by the name of Katherine Locke--a star.” She followed that role playing Ophelia in the Maurice Evans production of “Hamlet,” earning the praise of John Mason Brown as the “greatest” actress to perform the part.

Other Broadway plays included “Fifth Column” with Lee Cobb and “Clash by Night” with Tallulah Bankhead.

Hollywood came calling, and Miss Locke was cast in a series of films: “The Seventh Cross,” “The Snake Pit,” “Try and Get Me,” “People Will Talk,” “Flesh and Fury,” “A Certain Smile.”

She limited her stage and film career after meeting Corwin when she appeared on one of his radio shows and married him in 1947.

Born in Russia, Miss Locke grew up on the East Coast and was sent to the Damrosch Academy by her family, who wanted her to become a concert pianist.

Instead, she fled to Los Angeles, where she joined a group of young actors called the Potboilers appearing at the Theatre Mart.

“I wanted lots of space between myself and that piano,” Miss Locke laughingly told The Times in 1950.

She worked as a movie extra while learning her craft on stage.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by a son, Anthony, of Thousand Oaks and a daughter, Diane Okarski of Spokane, Wash.