She was a renowned interpreter of the works of Eugene O'Neill on the stage, and her career also encompassed film, early dramas on live television, and performances in Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival.

It is arguably her best known role because of the Sullivan-produced series' continuing popularity and also the initial co-production by the CBC; allowing for rebroadcasts over the years on it, and also on PBS in the United States.

Fred Dewhurst was the owner of a chain of confectionery stores and had been a celebrated athlete in Canada, where he had played football with the Ottawa Rough Riders.

[4] One of her more significant stage roles was in the 1974 Broadway revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten as Josie Hogan, for which she won a Tony Award.

She (as recounted in her posthumous obituary in collaboration with Tom Viola) wrote: With Brooks Atkinson's blessing, our world changed overnight.

Suddenly in our audience of neighbors in T-shirts and jeans appeared men in white shirts, jackets and ties and ladies in summer dresses.

[5]She played Shakespeare's Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth for Papp and years later, Gertrude in a production of Hamlet at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.

She appeared in 1962 as Joanne Novak in the episode "I Don't Belong in a White-Painted House" in the medical drama The Eleventh Hour, starring Wendell Corey and Jack Ging.

Dewhurst appeared opposite her then husband, Scott, in a 1971 television adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Price, on Hallmark Hall of Fame, and an anthology series.

[citation needed] During the last years of her life she lived on a farm in South Salem, New York, with her partner Ken Marsolais.

[citation needed] Maureen Stapleton wrote about Dewhurst: Colleen looked like a warrior, so people assumed she was the earth mother.

Her generosity of spirit was overwhelming and her smile so dazzling that you couldn't pull the ... reins in on her even if you desperately wanted to and knew damn well that somebody should.