Honestly? She’s fully believable as Nicole Kidman’s mother. They look a lot alike. Kidman’s taller than she is—apparently Kidman’s nearly six feet tall, which I hadn’t realized—but at 5’9”, she was still taller than their mutual former Far and Away costar, which is satisfying. There’s a lot of acting in that movie from a lot of people, and Barbara Babcock holds her own. She’s not the most noteworthy person in that movie, even leaving aside its stars—we’ll be getting to Colm Meaney next year, and Brendan Gleeson is on the schedule for 2024—but she’s definitely entertaining in every scene she’s in.
Seldom do we encounter living actors whose careers stretch back as far as Babcock’s does. The United States Steel Hour is much more likely to appear in the other column than this one. And in fact, she was in the episode “Bang the Drum Slowly,” with Paul Newman, which appears on a Criterion set. Babcock was nineteen at the time. In fact, much about Babcock’s early life is interesting; her father was an army general stationed in Tokyo before the war; Babcock spoke Japanese before she spoke English. She was, quite frankly, a socialite when she was young, going to Miss Porter’s School, which also turned out the Bouvier sisters, among others.
But of course, I mostly got to know her through much later TV. Possibly the first place I saw her was Empty Nest, the Golden Girls spin-off that honestly I watched more than I watched The Golden Girls. (I’m pretty sure I still haven’t seen Hill Street Blues, though I should give it a try at some point.) Certainly she was a steady part of Saturday evenings of my childhood for a while during her Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman years. Her appearance on it is probably even what led to her being declared one of People’s fifty Most Beautiful People of the year in 1994.
She also did a lot of the ‘90s-era Standard TV Career Shows. Frasier, albeit not until 2001. The Pretender—her character is actually an important part of the show’s lore despite her only being on the show twice. China Beach, for all you Jenny Nicholson fans. Sisters. Chicago Hope. All this while keeping up a steady presence in movies, and if few of them are as notable as Far and Away—or, okay, Bang the Drum Slowly—she’s definitely a face that anyone who watched TV from that first appearance to about 2004 would recognize. She even did an episode of The Munsters!
These days, she’s retired; sadly, she is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. It’s a disheartening end to a fascinating career. There are not many people we cover for these columns who hold patents, and while I’m unable to find out exactly what’s so different about the shampoo she and fellow actress Susan Bjurman developed, it’s still interesting to discover that they have one. If it was ever actually put on the market, I don’t know about it, but it seems clear that Babcock’s legacy is secure either way.
I’ve just added a movie of hers to the Camera Obscura schedule; help me afford the DVD (it’s not streaming anywhere) by contributing to my Patreon or Ko-fi!
