Nurturing Children, Training a Voice, Roughing up a Barber -- Reta Shaw Could Do It All Convincingly

No two characters seen on The Andy Griffith Show were more different than Big Maude, the escaped convict who gleefully dominates Barney Fife, and Eleanora Poultice, the overly sentimental music teacher who wills herself to hear greatness in the deputy's awful singing voice.

One has no sensitivity; the other is overflowing with it. And devoted viewers of the show revel in the hilarious opposite extremes of both women – probably without even realizing they are watching the same performer.

That testifies to the greatness of Reta Shaw. The daughter of a New England orchestra leader, she was one of television’s best character actors – that breed of performer who takes home less money and far less name recognition than an Andy Griffith or a Hope Lang. But knowing you are indispensable to TV and movies is one of the satisfactions of the character actor craft.

"People love to laugh," Shaw said in a 1968 interview. "They love to be entertained. If I can bring a laugh, or please someone, I have accomplished something."

Shaw was deft at the routine of pouring her heart into a role, then moving on, making television programs and movies feasible by being dependable, then expendable. A character actor’s ability to focus like a laser on one or two scenes, then quickly move to another unrelated production also gives her or him a mobility that the wealthy screen idol can’t match.

Reta consoles Will Robinson in a Lost in Space episode that is lost in time, and Vermont's politics 

 

Shaw was famous, yet anonymous – always playing characters with delightfully overstated charm, enunciating each syllable with an evangelical passion. That may have been residual from her one-time aspiration of becoming a religious missionary.

Of playing TV and movie characters, she said: “It's different from feeding souls in one way, but it's feeding them in another way."

As with other successful character actors, viewers fleetingly recognize her, then return their attention to the plot.

 

     Spotting talent - that no one else in Mayberry does

 

 

 

        But as a convict, Reta dances to a different tune

 

 

Shaw’s persuasive, husky style, though never used to preach religious messages, proved perfect for playing people with connections to spirits of another sort. She is remembered as housekeeper Martha Grant on the 1968-70 sitcom The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, an acclaimed show based on the 1940s novel about a widow and her family who move into a seaside mansion which turned out to be haunted by the ghost of the sea captain who once owned it.

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Acne and house calls aren't what they seem to be in Rita's brief role in the 1971 made for TV movie "Murder Once Removed," a love triangle murder tale.

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Prior to Mrs. Muir having a TV house guest from the afterlife, Shaw played Mrs. Halcyon Maxwell in Alan Rafkin’s movie "The Ghost And Mr. Chicken." In Bewitched, she had a recurring role as Samantha’s Aunt Hagatha. One of Shaw's most beloved movie roles was in the 1957 musical "The Pajama Game."

On Andy Griffith, Shaw played those opposite personality types, but the roles were similar in that Big Maude was outside the bounds of the law and Eleanora Poultice was outside the bounds of common sense in seeing Barney Fife as musically talented, going with her heart instead of her ears.

And Shaw played in a chronologically confusing Lost in Space episode in the mid-1960s, which took place of course in the 90s, but with the unique setting of a tiny hamlet in Vermont.

Will Robinson is unintentionally whisked back to Earth, only to long to rejoin his family in the distant cosmos. Vermont is shown as a place of crank telephones, high water pants and backward bumpkins. In this anachronistic portrayal of the Green Mountain State, Reta Shaw plays a folksy, caring aunt-figure for the boy.

Had this Lost In Space episode's conception of 1990s Vermont included the true-to-life socialist in Congress, same-sex civil unions and -- especially -- Ben And Jerry's, what kid Will's age wouldn't have figured they'd landed in paradise? 

Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA... As a bonus, he links to Reta Shaw singing and dancing in the musical "The Pajama Game":