Barbara Cason; Veteran of TV, Stage Work

Barbara Cason, known most recently as the comic actress who played Gary Shandling’s mother on the offbeat “It’s Gary Shandling’s Show” on the Fox television network, has died of apparent heart failure, her friend and publicist said Tuesday. She was 61.

Larry Frank said she died Monday in her Hollywood Hills home.

A veteran of stage and television work, she also was seen on TV from 1977 to 1979 as Cloris Phebus, the man-hungry policewoman in the comedy “Carter Country.” She had been a regular on the 1970 summer series “Comedy Tonight,” a spoof of standard television programming, and as the proper Miss Tillis of the hospital accounting department in the medical satire “New Temperatures Rising” from 1973 to 1974.

Cason graduated from the University of Mississippi with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater arts. After graduation, she returned to her hometown of Memphis, Tenn., where she co-founded the Front Street Theatre.

She moved to New York in the early 1960s to appear in “Plaza 9 Revue” at the Plaza Hotel.

During the next 10 years, Cason was cast in a number of Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including “Marat Sade,” “Oh, Coward!” and “Firebugs,” for which she received an Obie (off-Broadway) award nomination. In 1973, she appeared locally in “Oh, Coward!” at the Ivar Theater.

Cason’s feature film credits included “Cold Turkey” and “Heretic II.”

Frank said her final stage role was last year in the Los Angeles production of “Beyond Therapy.” The Shandling show made its final broadcast earlier this month.

Cason is survived by her husband of 20 years, actor Dennis Patrick, who asks that donations be made to the American Heart Assn. at St. John’s Hospital and Health Center in Santa Monica.