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Mary Ethel Gregory, a Utah actress who had roles in "Footloose" and "The Executioner's Song," died Tuesday in St. George after a long battle with cancer. She was 79.
"She was a born actress, really," her husband, Herold (Huck) Gregory, said Thursday.
She was born Mary Ethel Eccles on Nov. 27, 1925, in Salt Lake City. She caught the acting bug from her father, Albert Eccles, a well-known local theater actor.
Gregory was class valedictorian at Granite High School, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah. She earned her college tuition working on such local radio programs as KSL's "Potluck Party."
Among Gregory's favorite stage roles, her husband said, were as the drug-addicted Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and the long-suffering Nurse Preen in "The Man Who Came to Dinner." When Nurse Preen told off her annoying patient, Gregory "got an ovation every night," her husband said.
She had a supporting role in "The Executioner's Song," the 1982 miniseries about murderer Gary Gilmore's last days before facing a Utah firing squad. Gregory played the wife of Gilmore's best friend, played by Eli Wallach, and in one scene danced with Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones) in a prison waiting room.
Other notable film roles were as a secretary in "Footloose," and as a rock star's plague-stricken mother in "Stephen King's The Stand." She also played the grandmother who recounts the Mormon migration in "Legacy," the first movie screened in Salt Lake City's Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
Cancer in her lip ended her acting career, her husband said. One of her last acting jobs was providing a voice in the 1997 documentary "Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail."
"I remember her putting a piece of tape over her lower lip, so it would mimic her lower lip, and she was able to pronounce clearly," said Lee Groberg, the documentary's director. "She was a lady of the finest, highest quality."
The Gregorys' son, Walt Gregory, also took up show business, recording (as The Walter & Hays Band) the '90s novelty song "The Mormon Rap."
Gregory is survived by her husband and son, daughters Vicki and Suellen, five grandchildren and a brother. Funeral services are set for noon Saturday at the Monument Park 20th Ward, 2795 E. Crestview Drive, Salt Lake City. Visitation is at the chapel tonight, 6 to 8 p.m., and for an hour before Saturday's services. A donation to charity is suggested in lieu of flowers.