Moonlight and Magnolias Star Margo Skinner Dead at 55
"I can appreciate now how uniquely fortunate I am to have been schooled by [Margo] at this moment, to have watched her and played with her as I did," Moonlight and Magnolias costar Douglas Sills told Broadway.com. "She was whip smart, had a criminally wicked sense of humor and remained, throughout our time together, incessantly inventive. In a role which was, for her, unusually short on stage time, she was a model of judicious resourcefulness, always making just the right-sized meal out of any sized portion. Margo's art had the wonderous economy and precision of Stan Laurel; but then considering her warm sensuality she might have been the bastard love child of Mary Pickford and Buster Keaton. Her good-natured sense of play and gracious spirit at work were for all of us utterly infectious."
Skinner had been playing Miss Poppenghul, personal secretary to David O. Selznick played by Sills in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Rob Hutchinson's Moonlight and Magnolias. She was in the show on April 10 as scheduled and received massive applause upon her final exit, as was typical. Her role will now be played by understudy Karen Trott.
"She alone did receive exit applause Sunday night on her final exit from the stage," Sills added. "[It] seems now she was being welcomed home with a send off she might have crafted herself for someone she loved and cared about very much. I asked her once what was the most romantic Broadway song, her answer seems now acutely prescient, 'If Ever I Would Leave You.' In her honor, we'll change course a bit and proceed, but it will be impossible to go on."
She is survived by two sisters, Sussanah Kelly and Sarah Skinner, a nephew, John Kelly, and her companion, Andrew Macagnone.