Kathleen Freeman; Actress Known for Comedic Flair

She played belligerent landladies, beleaguered nurses, nosy neighbors, loudmouthed battle-axes and maids, lots of maids.

Kathleen Freeman, the inimitable comedy character actress who capped her more than 50-year career with a recent Tony nomination for her role as the piano player in Broadway’s musical hit “The Full Monty,” died of lung cancer Thursday in New York. She was 78.

She gave her final performance in “The Full Monty” on Aug. 18.

“She was the perfect definition of the consummate pro, and she played the last year of her life to full houses and standing ovations,” said Jack O’Brien, director of “The Full Monty.” “It seems like an appropriate curtain.”

Known for her versatility and comedic flair, Freeman worked steadily in Hollywood, beginning in 1948 when she played a bit part as a girl on a subway in “The Naked City.” Her only line was, “Didja read about the bathtub murder?”

In the classic musical “Singin’ In the Rain,” she played the frustrated vocal coach who attempts to get the speech-challenged movie star played by Jean Hagen to properly enunciate the phrase, “I cahhhn’t staaand him.”

Among Freeman’s long list of movie credits are “The Fly,” with Vincent Price; “The Rounders,” with Henry Fonda; “North to Alaska,” with John Wayne; and “The Far Country,” with James Stewart--not to mention “The Blues Brothers” and “Blues Brothers 2000,” in which she played the imperious Sister Mary Stigmata.

Freeman also was a favorite comic foil for Jerry Lewis, who cast her in many of his films, including “The Ladies’ Man” and “The Nutty Professor.”

In “The Disorderly Orderly,” she cries quietly as a chagrined Lewis scrapes oatmeal off her face and lamely says, “Oh, Nurse Higgins . . . you’re full of . . . stuff.”

Freeman’s work in television is a virtual history of the medium, from “Topper” in the 1950s and “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the 1960s to “Murphy Brown” and “Married . . . With Children” in the 1990s.

And though she was equally adept at drama on stage and in front of the camera, comedy was her forte.

“This will sound very corny and I’m sorry,” Freeman told Associated Press last year, “but I have always had the sense I was put here to do this: I am somebody who is around to help the world laugh. I have always had that sense. Corny but absolutely true.”

The daughter of vaudevillians, Freeman was born in Chicago in 1923. She joined the family act at age 2, doing a little dance, and grew up on the road.

Freeman majored in music at UCLA and planned to be a concert pianist. But then, as she recalled last year, “A terrible thing happened. I got in a play and got a laugh. I just said a line and ‘boom.’ ”

She worked with a number of local theater groups in the 1940s, including the Circle Players in Hollywood, where she worked under the direction of such greats as Charlie Chaplin, Charles Laughton and Robert Morley.

“She was such a fine actress and comedian, and you couldn’t miss that talent,” said actress-director Peggy Webber, who saw Freeman on stage at the Circle Theatre in 1948 and hired her for her first job on television, in Webber’s live local series “Treasures of Literature.”

Over the last 13 years, Freeman was a fixture in the cast of the California Artists Radio Theatre, which records live performances of classic books and plays for National Public Radio.

She appeared in more than 50 of the group’s productions, including works by Shakespeare and Shaw, and played opposite actors such as Roddy McDowall, Samantha Eggar and David Warner.

“She was the most buoyant, hopeful, joyous member of our company,” said Webber, the executive director.

For many years, Freeman ran an acting workshop in Studio City, where she trained young actors for theater, television and film, and held industry showcases for her students.

Webber said Freeman, who learned she had cancer three months into the run of “The Full Monty,” returned home in July while on a two-week break to present a showcase of her students’ work.

“She was so dedicated to her students,” Webber said. “Even though she was ill at the time, she went ahead and kept her promise.”

Freeman, a Van Nuys resident, never married.

Memorial services are pending in New York and Los Angeles.