Barbara Angie Rose Baxley was born on New Year's Day 1923 to Emma A. & C. Bert Baxley in Porterville, CA. She was the youngest of their two daughters and was named after her grandmothers; Angie Sibley-Tyler and Iva Matilda Rose-Baxley. Barbara attended and graduated with honors from the University of the Pacific in Stockton where she was raised, and won a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York where she studied with Sanford Meisner. She made her 1948 Broadway debut in Noël Coward's Private Lives, starring Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook. In 1960 she received a Tony nomination for her role in the Tennessee Williams play Period of Adjustment. She was a charter member of the Actors Studio where she studied with Elia Kazan. She was good friends with and shared an apartment with Tallulah Bankhead for many years. She had many television & film roles, and won critical praise for her role as Sally Field 's mother in Norma Rae (1979), but her love was Broadway. Barbara loved cats and had one named Tulah.