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\n\tElizabeth Franz, who received a Tony Award for her unusual, forceful turn as the wife of Brian Dennehy<\/a>\u2019s Willy Loman in a 50th anniversary production of Arthur Miller\u2019s Death of a Salesman<\/em>, has died. She was 84.<\/p>\n \n\tFranz died Nov. 4 at her home in Woodbury, Connecticut, after a battle with cancer, her husband, screenwriter Christopher Pelham, told<\/a> The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tFranz also landed Tony noms in 1983 and 2002, respectively, for portraying Kate Jerome (Matthew Broderick\u2019s mom) in Neil Simon<\/a>\u2019s Brighton Beach Memoirs<\/em> and the youngest of four sisters (Piper Laurie<\/a>, Frances Sternhagen<\/a> and Estelle Parsons were her siblings) in a revival of Paul Osborn\u2019s Morning\u2019s at Seven<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tPlus, she sparkled \u2014 and won an Obie Award in 1980 \u2014 for her performance as the strict nun in Christopher Durang\u2019s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tFranz and Dennehy had started out with Death of a Salesman<\/em> at the Goodman Theater<\/a> in Chicago before they arrived on Broadway<\/a> at the Eugene O\u2019Neill in February 1999.<\/p>\n \n\tRather than play Linda Loman as a beaten-down wife, Franz took a far more assertive, outraged approach and added an element of sexuality to the role.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou can say anything because you know in the end you\u2019re going be in that bed, curled up and having the most wonderful conversations,\u201d she told<\/a> the Times<\/em> in 1999. \u201cWhen she\u2019s curled up in his arms and she\u2019s singing to him \u2014 you can\u2019t tell me that isn\u2019t a very sexual moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMiller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949 for the play, praised Franz in the Times<\/em> piece, saying that she \u201chas discovered in the role the basic underlying powerful protectiveness, which comes out as fury, and that in the past, in every performance I know of, was simply washed out.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe and Dennehy \u2014 who also won a Tony for his work \u2014 then appeared in a 2000 production for Showtime, with both receiving Emmy nominations.<\/p>\n \n\tElizabeth Jean Frankovitch was born on June 18, 1941, in Akron, Ohio. Her father, Joseph, worked in a tire factory in town, and her mother, Harriet, was a part-time waitress who was mentally ill and would disappear for months at a time, she told the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tShe graduated from Copley High School in Ohio and from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York in 1962, appeared often in summer productions at the Dorset Playhouse in Vermont and made it to Broadway for the first time in 1967 in Tom Stoppard\u2019s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter working with Simon in Brighton Beach Memoirs<\/em>, he hired her to step in for Linda Lavin<\/a> as the strong-willed Kate in 1987 in Broadway Bound<\/em>, the third play in his autobiographical \u201cEugene Trilogy.\u201d<\/p>\n