Louise Platt, 88; Last Survivor of Passengers in Movie ‘Stagecoach’
Actress Louise Platt, 88, the last surviving passenger aboard the overland stage in “Stagecoach,” the classic 1939 John Ford western, died of undisclosed causes Sept. 6 at a hospital in Greenport, N.Y.
Platt played Lucy Mallory, the pregnant wife of a cavalry officer, on the Lordsburg-bound coach driven by Andy Devine.
Her fellow passengers included John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, Donald Meek, John Carradine and Berton Churchill.
The daughter of a Navy doctor, Platt was born in Stamford, Conn., and grew up in Annapolis, Md. She made her Broadway debut in 1936 and her film debut two years later.
After “Stagecoach,” Platt appeared in only four more movies before returning to the New York stage.
Among her television credits were “Naked City” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” From 1958 to 1959, she played Ruth Jannings Holden in the soap opera “The Guiding Light.”
Platt was married twice, to Broadway director Jed Harris, with whom she had a daughter, and to director and teacher Stanley Gould, with whom she had another daughter.
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