Biography

Blonde Lenka Peterson was born Lenka (or Lenke) Isacson in Omaha, where she was raised, the daughter of a Swedish diagnostician, Sven Edward Isacson, and a Hungarian lab tech, Magdalina "Lenke" (Leinweber). She gained her first acting experience in local amateur theatre. Having majored in drama at the University of Iowa, she moved to New York in 1943. As a struggling actress trying to make it to Broadway, she lived in humble lodgings at the Rehearsal Club, a girls' boarding house. Her first paid work ($20 a week) was as a uniformed tour guide at NBC studios. Through an agent she was eventually able to obtain a job as an understudy at a New Hampshire playhouse which led to further acting stints at regional theatres in other states. In 1947, she made her Broadway debut (the first of eleven further appearances) in the play Bathsheba at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. In 1948, she wed Daniel Patrick O'Connor, with whom she would have five children, including actors Glynnis O'Connor and Darren O'Connor.

One of the first members to enrol at New York's Actor's Studio, Lenka was spotted by Elia Kazan who cast her in a small role in his motion picture Panic in the Streets (1950). By 1951, with regular job offers now forthcoming, she commuted between Hollywood and her home base in St. Louis (where her husband was employed in the speech and drama department of the university), now earning $350 a week for acting in early TV anthologies and drama series. Her subsequent career was largely divided between theatre and television. The former culminated in a Tony Award-nominated performance as Best Actress on Broadway for the 1984 musical "Quilters". While success on the stage did not parlay into stardom on screen, she was rarely out of work in that medium. There were recurring roles in several soaps, including Ryan's Hope (1975) and Another World (1964), as well as many guest spots in popular shows like Route 66 (1960), Kojak (1973), Quincy, M.E. (1976), Hill Street Blues (1981) and Law & Order (1990). She also sidelined as an acting teacher at the Metropolitan Opera Studio and was founder of the non-profit Westchester Young Actors Theater in New York.

- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis