Actress Dixie Carter Dies at 70
Actress Dixie Carter, who was the epitome of Southern sass in the television series “Designing Women,” died yesterday from complications of endometrial cancer. She was 70.
Like most young Alabamians, when I was a girl I hated being from the South. I was constantly daydreaming of the day I’d escape and make my way to New York. In the 1990s I started watching “Designing Women,” randomly, and women like Julia Sugarbaker, Carter’s iconic character, slowly made me proud to be from this side of the Mason-Dixon line. As The New York Times wrote, Carter “gave strong, opinionated Southern women a good name.”
In honor of Carter’s career, here’s one of my favorite scenes from the series:
I’m wondering if the sadness we feel is regional? I haven’t been social networking as much as usual, but the only status updates/ postings I’ve seen about Dixie Carter are by women from Alabama, South Carolina and Kentucky.
That’s a good question. I sure hope we Southern gals aren’t the only ones who appreciated her.
I’m not from the south, and I loved Dixie Carter more than anything. I actually cried when I heard of her death.
She was a class act.