Justine Johnston

Justine Johnston (1921-2006) was a character actress on Broadway and occasionally in film and television. Often cast as snobbish dowagers or matrons, she appeared in the Sesame Street video Big Bird Gets Lost as a prim customer. Johnston's ornate feathered hat and yellow suit cause Maria to mistake her for Big Bird, prompting a shocked and affronted retreat.

Johnston made her Broadway debut late in life, originating the role of Heidi Schiller in Sondheim's Follies in 1971. Other Broadway shows included Me and My Girl, Irene, Molly, Angel, Sondheim: A Musical Tribute, and I Remember Mama. In film, she played Aunt Pearl Bach, disapproving of Dudley Moore in Arthur, and most of her other TV and movie roles were in the same mold: well-heeled matrons with such typical names as Mrs. Armstrong (the Seinfeld episode "The Letter"), Hermione Rockwell (the sitcom Mrs. Rhodes), Mrs. Comstock (the TV movie The Train), and Mrs. Puddingforth (The Duke, with Paxton Whitehead). She even typified the upper-class American dowager outside of its native habitat, appearing in the 1998 French film Que la lumière soit.

However, most of Johnston's career was spent on the road with such touring musicals as Milk and Honey, The Gazebo, and in particular, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, playing the austere Roman matriarch Domina off and on for over thirty years. Appearing in typical mode on stage in Lend Me a Tenor, one critic described the actress, clad in a sparkling evening gown, as looking "eerily like Miss Piggy competing in a Margaret Dumont look-alike contest."