Felicia Montealegre Bernstein

Felicia Montealegre Bernstein ( Felicia María Cohn Montealegre; February 6, 1922 – June 16, 1978) was an American actress born in Costa Rica.

Montealegre appeared in televised dramas and theatrical roles.

She also performed with symphony orchestras in dramatic acting and narrating roles.

Her collaborators included her husband Leonard Bernstein.

Felicia María Cohn Montealegre was born on February 6, 1922, in San José, Costa Rica.

Her mother, Clemencia Cristina Montealegre Carazo, was Costa Rican; her father, Roy Elwood Cohn, was a United States mining executive stationed in Costa Rica.

Felicia had two sisters, Nancy Alessandri and Madeline Lecaros.

Mariano Montealegre Bustamante, the first vice head of state of Costa Rica, was her great-great-grandfather.

Felicia moved to Chile at age 1 and was educated at the French School of Nuns.

She was raised Catholic and later converted to Judaism before marrying Leonard Bernstein.

Her paternal grandfather was Jewish.

In 1944 at age 21, Montealegre established herself in New York, where she took piano lessons from Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau.

Upon her arrival in New York, Montealegre started acting lessons with Herbert Berghof at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research.

She then continued studying with him at his newly founded acting school HB Studio.

In April 1945, Montealegre made her first New York acting appearance in the English-language premiere of Federico Garcia Lorca's If Five Years Pass at the Provincetown Playhouse.

Montealegre made her Broadway debut on July 20, 1946, at the Booth Theatre as the ingénue in Ben Hecht's Swan Song.

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.

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 W. Somerset Maugham's novel in which Montealegre played Mildred opposite Charlton Heston as Philip Carey.

Montealegre appeared in four episodes of the CBS series Suspense (1949–1954), live teleplays featuring people in dangerous situations.

She appeared first in an episode entitled "The Yellow Scarf" (aired June 7, 1949), where she played 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.

In 1950, she was an understudy to Leora Dana in Samuel A. Taylor's The Happy Time on Broadway, starring Eva Gabor and Montealegre's then-lover Richard Hart.

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.

The other three episodes were "The Tip" (1950), "Death Sabre" (1951), and "An Affair with a Ghost" (1954).

In 1952, she co-starred alongside Heston again in The Wings of the Dove, based on the 1902 novel by Henry James.

Montealegre's Shakespearean roles included Jessica in a 1953 production of The Merchant of Venice at New York City Center and as Katharine in Henry V in a 1956 production at the Cambridge Drama Festival in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Other notable stage appearances included Margot Wendice in Dial M for Murder at the Palm Beach Playhouse (Florida) in 1957 and Sally Bowles in Van Druten's I Am a Camera at the North Jersey Playhouse, starring alongside her lifelong friend and colleague Michael (Mendy) Wager.

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 (French: 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.

In 1963, Montealegre became the first chair of the Women's Division of the New York Civil Liberties Union, where her efforts focused on educational programs and fundraising events.

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.

Montealegre told the San Francisco Examiner in 1964, "It's amazing how little even knowledgeable people know about the Constitution and what people are fighting for."

Montealegre supported the anti-war grassroots campaign Another Mother for Peace.

Montealegre returned to the Broadway stage in 1967 to play Birdie Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes directed by family friend Mike Nichols.

Initiated on Mother's Day of 1967, volunteers mailed postcards to President Lyndon B. Johnson and members of Congress with the message that "War is not healthy for children and other living things. Talk peace."

Two years later, she was also one of 100 individuals arrested in an antiwar protest in Washington, D.C.

On January 14, 1970, Montealegre hosted a fundraiser at the Bernsteins' Park Avenue apartment to support the families of Panther 21, members of the Black Panther Party who had been jailed for nine months without set trial dates or financial resources to cover legal fees and their families' economic hardships.

She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1973 as Andromache in Berlioz's opera Les Troyens, the work's first staging in New York City.

Montealegre made her final Broadway appearance in the 1976 play Poor Murderer, directed by her former acting teacher Herbert Berghof.