Jeanette Nolan; Longtime TV, Film Actress

Jeanette Nolan, a character actress whose career spanned 70 years and included the current motion picture “The Horse Whisperer,” has died. She was 86.

Nolan, who portrayed Robert Redford’s mother in the contemporary western film, died Friday in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a stroke.

A native of Los Angeles, Nolan began acting with the Pasadena Community Playhouse in her teens and moved into radio while a student at Los Angeles City College. She made her radio debut in 1932 in “Omar Khayyam,” the first transcontinental broadcast from radio station KHJ. She also performed on radio’s “The Hollywood Hotel,” “One Man’s Family,” “Suspense,” “Cavalcade of Stars,” “March of Time” and her own summer replacement show, called “Dramatic Interlude With Jeanette Nolan.”

Equally happy on her Montana ranch and in Hollywood, she was particularly known for her roles in westerns. Those included such television series as “Laredo,” “Gunsmoke” and, with her late husband, John McIntire, “The Virginian” and his series “Wagon Train.” Among her western films were “Saddle Tramp,” “The Seventh Cavalry,” “Guns of Fort Petticoat” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” Family friend Tracey Campbell said it was appropriate that Nolan’s final role should be in “The Horse Whisperer,” set in her much-loved Montana.

“When we’re here, I’m enchanted to work in Hollywood. When we’re in Montana, I don’t care if I ever work again,” she told The Times in 1966. “If I could have my way, combine both, I’d be just as happy being a second-unit cameraman on a nature series.”

She had a range far beyond the western genre, however. One of her best-remembered films was her first, in which she played Lady Macbeth opposite actor-director Orson Welles in his 1948 “Macbeth.”

Nolan also had key roles in several mystery and detective shows on both the small and large screens--episodes of “Perry Mason,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Richard Diamond, Private Detective,” “I Spy,” “The FBI,” “Harry O,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “MacGyver,” and such films as “The Big Heat.”

Nominated for an Emmy four times, she appeared in more than 300 television programs and in three of her own series, “Hotel De Paree,” “The Richard Boone Anthology Series” and “Dirty Sally,” which was a spinoff of “Gunsmoke.”

She often said that her favorite stage role was as Helen Keller’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, in “The Miracle Worker,” which had earned a compliment from Keller.

Some of her favorite in-character images were featured in a 1986 gallery photo series by her daughter, Holly Wright, titled “Moving Pictures.”

In Nolan’s later years, she voiced characters for Disney’s animated “The Rescuers” and “The Fox and the Hound” and performed for California Artists Radio Theatre.

Nolan will be buried in Montana with her late husband and their son, actor Tim McIntire.

In addition to her daughter, of Charlottesville, Va., she is survived by a sister, Miriam Walker of Ashland, Ore., and one grandson.

The family has asked that any memorial donations be sent to the Theatre Arts Academy at Los Angeles City College, 855 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90026, where a scholarship has been established in her name.