Rest in peace

Maxine Stuart, 94, Dies; Acted on Stage, Film and TV

Maxine Stuart’s stage, film and television career spanned more than six decades, including a recurring role on the soap opera “The Edge of Night” and a guest spot on a memorable episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

But she was equally well known to readers of Helene Hanff’s nonfiction books “84, Charing Cross Road” and “Underfoot in Show Business” as Ms. Hanff’s deliciously dizzy sidekick in their attempts to make it on Broadway in the 1930s and ’40s.

Ms. Stuart, who died on June 6 at 94, makes several cameo appearances in “84,” as the book is known to its ardent fans. First published in 1970, it is an epistolary memoir of Ms. Hanff’s long correspondence with the staff of a London bookshop. (In the 1987 film version of the book, starring Anne Bancroft as Ms. Hanff, Ms. Stuart is played by Jean De Baer.)

In “Underfoot,” Ms. Stuart is a genuine co-star. That book, published in 1962, recounts Ms. Hanff’s years in New York as a struggling playwright in tandem with Ms. Stuart’s as a struggling actress.