Jennifer Leak obit

Jennifer Leak D’Auria

Sept. 28, 1947 - March 18, 2024 

She was not on the list.

An actress whose career included both film and television credits, Jennifer Leak D’Auria of Jupiter, Fla., died at home there on March 18. Formerly of East Hampton, New York City, and Amagansett, Ms. D’Auria had for the last seven years been coping with a rare neurological disease, progressive supranuclear palsy. She was 76.

Her career began when she was 17, after filming a pilot for a Canadian television series called “Wojeck.” Mike Nichols, the film director, was “impressed with her un-studied natural talents,” James D’Auria, her husband of 47 years, said. Then known as Jennifer Leak, she was cast in Nichols’s “The Graduate,” but immigration issues kept her from being able to take part in the shoot.

She later moved to Los Angeles, living at the Hollywood Studio Club, a kind of dormitory for women, and within a few months she was cast as Lucille Ball’s daughter in the 1968 film “Yours, Mine and Ours.”

Her career continued with episodic, nighttime TV shows including “Hawaii Five-0,” “Nero Wolfe,” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” She was later cast in “Bright Promise,” a daytime soap opera, and daytime television “became her favorite medium and what she loved performing in most,” her husband said. For three years she was a cast member on “The Young and the Restless” in Los Angeles, and then spent three years working on “Another World” in New York.

It was during her time in New York that she met her future husband. They married in April of 1977. Four years later, they bought a house on Dayton Lane in East Hampton and began splitting their time between there and the city. In 1997 they moved to Town Lane in Amagansett, which, after 9/11, became their primary residence. They moved back to East Hampton in 2013, but sold their house in 2017 and moved to Florida full time.

Jennifer Leak was born at her maternal grandmother’s house in Cardiff, Wales, on Sept. 28, 1947, to Kenneth Leak and the former Bernice Howard. She grew up in Hertfordshire, England, before emigrating to Nova Scotia, then Jerusalem, then Toronto.

In East Hampton, she worked for many years as a sales agent with the Devlin McNiff real estate company.

Later in life, she was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she began participating in research programs. “Her courage and bravery tried in vain to fight the disease,” Mr. D’Auria wrote, noting that she made one final gift, donating her brain tissue to the Mayo Clinic for further research.

Mr. D’Auria described his wife as “a shy and private person, never desiring to be the center of attention or having the need for an audience. She saved those feelings and exhibited them only when on camera, and then she became electric.”

In addition to her husband, Ms. D’Auria leaves a brother, Kenneth Leak of Toronto.

Her ashes will be buried in the graveyard of her childhood church in Rumney, Wales.

 

Filmography

Film

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1968    Yours, Mine and Ours            Colleen North  

1969    Eye of the Cat Poor Dear    

1974    The Photographer            Elowise Atkins 

1981    The Incubus            Deena Ferrin  

1985    Agent on Ice   Helen Pope   

 

Television

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1966            Wojeck          Gale Fletcher            2 episodes

1969    The Good Guys            Suzi            Episode: "Take a Computer to Lunch"

1969    Hawaii Five-O Diana Cole            Episode: "King Kamehameha Blues"

1970    Lost Flight    Beejay Caldwell            Television film

1972    The Delphi Bureau            Judy Rogers            Episode: "The Top Secret Secret Project"

1973    A Time for Love            Patricia            Television film

1973            McMillan & Wife            Nell            Episode: "Death of a Monster... Birth of a Legend"

1973    The Rookies            Sister Anne            Episode: "Prayers Unanswered, Prayers Unheard"

1974    The Mary Tyler Moore Show            Erica Jordan            Episode: "Better Late... That's a Pun... Than Never"

1974            Ironside          Judith MacDane            Episode: "A Death in Academe"

1975    Ryan's Hope    Nurse Klupper            Episode #1.44

1976–1979            Another World            Olive Randolph            6 episodes

1981    Nero Wolfe            Elizabeth Marsh            Episode: "Murder by the Book"

1981    Guiding Light     Blanche Bouvier            Episode dated 31 July 1981

1986    One Life to Live            Matron Spitz            Episode dated 26 September 1986

1992    Loving            Dr. Hennessy            2 episodes