Felicia Montealegre Bernstein
Felicia Montealegre Bernstein ( Felicia María Cohn Montealegre; February 6, 1922 – June 16, 1978) was a Costa Rican-Chilean actress and social activist.

Montealegre was famous for her performances in televised dramas and in theatrical roles on and off Broadway.  

She appeared with symphony orchestras throughout the United States in dramatic acting and narrating roles, including collaborations with her husband, American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

Life and career

Early life and education 
Felicia María Cohn Montealegre was born on February 6, 1922, in San José, Costa Rica she was the daughter of a Costa Rican mother Clemencia Cristina Montealegre Carazo, and American father Roy Elwood Cohn, a United States mining executive then stationed in Costa Rica. She had two sisters, Nancy Alessandri and Madeline Lecaros. 

Educated in Chile, she was raised Catholic and later converted to Judaism when marrying Leonard Bernstein. Her paternal grandfather was Jewish. 

In 1944, Montealegre established herself in New York, where she took piano lessons from her Chilean compatriot Claudio Arrau.

Television career 
Beginning in 1949, Montealegre starred in leading roles on weekly television anthology dramas for Kraft Television Theatre (NBC), Studio One (CBS), Suspense (CBS), The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (NBC) and The Philco Television Playhouse (NBC), among others.

Montealegre made her television debut on NBC's Kraft Television Theatre on May 11, 1949, as Hygieia in Mary Violet Heberden's The Oath of Hippocrates, alongside actors Dean Harens and Guy Spaull. In 1950, she appeared in the leading role of Nora Helmer in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, with John Newland as Krogstad and Theodore Newton as Thorvald.

She made her first appearance on the CBS Television Network's Studio One in the psychological thriller Flowers from a Stranger, which aired on May 25, 1949, with actor Yul Brynner. She acted in eleven Studio One teleplays between 1949 and 1956, including Of Human Bondage (aired November 21, 1949), based on Somerset Maugham's novel in which Montealegre played Mildred opposite Charlton Heston as Philip Carey. In 1952, she co-starred alongside Heston again in The Wings of the Dove, based on the 1902 eponymous novel by Henry James.

Montealegre appeared in four episodes of the Suspense series (1949-1954), live teleplays featuring people in dangerous situations. In an episode entitled "The Yellow Scarf" (aired June 7, 1949), she played a housekeeper Hettie, who finds herself in a strange scenario involving her mysterious employer Mr. Bronson, portrayed by Boris Karloff, and a social mission worker, Tom Weatherby, played by Douglass Watson.

Dramatic works with orchestra 
In 1957, Montealegre performed her first dramatic role in a classical music concert as the narrator in Lukas Foss's Parable of Death, based on the mystical poem by Rilke, for a concert of the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music. 

She performed the title role of Joan in Arthur Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake (Fr: Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher) several times, including in 1958 with her husband, Leonard Bernstein, conducting the New York Philharmonic and Leontyne Price in the role of Margaret. 

Bernstein wrote the narration for his Symphony No. 3: Kaddish with Montealegre in mind, and she narrated its American premiere with soprano Jennie Tourel and Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra on January 31, 1964.

In popular culture 
Montealegre features prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1970 essay "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's".

Personal life
Montealegre met composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein in 1946 at a party given by Claudio Arrau. After their first engagement to be married was broken off, she had a relationship with Broadway and Hollywood actor Richard Hart that lasted until his death in 1951. She and Bernstein married on September 9, 1951, and they went on to have three children: Jamie, Alexander and Nina. 

In 1967, Montealegre co-founded an anti-war organization "Another Mother for Peace" which educated women against the war in Vietnam. After hosting an evening for the Black Panther Party in 1970, she became a primary focus of Tom Wolfe's New York Magazine essay entitled "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's". Two years later, she was also one of 100 individuals arrested in an antiwar protest in Washington, D.C.

Montealegre died of lung cancer in East Hampton, New York, on June 16, 1978, at the age of 56.

Television credits

References

External links

1922 births
1978 deaths
American stage actresses
American television actresses
American people of Costa Rican-Jewish descent
Chilean people of Costa Rican-Jewish descent
Naturalized citizens of Chile
Converts to Judaism from Roman Catholicism
Costa Rican Jews
Jewish American actresses
20th-century American actresses
Chilean emigrants to the United States
Chilean Jews
Leonard Bernstein
Costa Rican emigrants
Immigrants to Chile