Mary Catherine Bozeman Osborn, who brought a successful acting career back to Sabine Parish to share her love of the stage via the Sabine Parish Players and Shakespeare in Sabine, passed away on October 31.
On stage, she was best remembered for her one-woman show named “Sim, One Night with a Lady Undertaker from Texas.” Her husband, William Osborn, wrote the comedy based on the true experiences of a remarkable woman, Mrs. Elma Beale Beck, who began her unusual career in a small Texas town in the 1920s. It is said that Sim is stranger than fiction and funnier.
The New York Times wrote that the play, was “...a good-humored piece of Americana, a one-woman show carried out by Mary Bozeman with such a natural flow of manner and language that you don’t doubt for a minute that it is as though you had actually dropped by for a visit with this old lady who couldn’t stop talking once she got going.”
Later in the review they’d say, “Mary Bozeman is an impressive actress, portraying Sim as an older woman who speaks about her life and work and family and times as she putters about her kitchen or relaxes on the porch. Miss Bozeman has her role down to perfection. She purses her lips and narrows her eyes as she talks, just as those people you know do when they are making mountains out of the molehills of trivia that sum up experiences.”
Rutgers Student Radio said of the production: “Mary Bozeman is fantastic. One would think that the story of an undertaker would be cold and depressing. However, Sim is anything but cold and depressing. Mary makes the audience glow with enthusiasm for her character. Sim’s stories are fascinating both in their seriousness and humor. Aside from making the seemingly mundane life of an undertaker incredibly interesting and endearing, Mary makes Sim come alive on stage. It is a night not soon forgotten.”
Osborn’s career allowed her to appear in many New York City venues and numerous other storied U.S. theaters including The Nutmeg in Connecticut, the Shreveport Summer Theatre, The Alley in Houston, The Dallas Theater Center Repertory Company and The Centenary Playhouse in Shreveport.
Following her successful run as actress, Bozeman and her husband, Bill, returned to their roots in Belmont in September 1991. With their talents combined, they organized the Sabine Parish Players and Shakespeare in Sabine. For 27 years they used those platforms to give back to the community they love. Their original production of “A Christmas Carol” ran for 20 years and ended in 2018.
During that time they produced “Our Town,” “Miranda,” “Love Letters,” “Dracula,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Greater Tuna,” “The Proposal,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “See How They Run,” “The Women,” “The Mousetrap,” “Julius Caesar,” “The Corn is Green,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “The Member of the Wedding,” “Blithe Spirit,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “Hamlet,” “The Dining Room,” “Othello,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “The School for Scandal,” “The Three Sisters,” “Macbeth,” “The Winter’s Tale,” “Sylvia,” “As You Like It,” “Medea,” “27 Wagons Full of Cotton,” “A Phoenix Too Frequent,” “Teen Theatre Festival,” “Queen Lear” and “Little Mary Sunshine.”
Asked why the arts are important to small communities, Mary answered: “They provide us with a look at the human condition and help us to place ourselves within its context. They differentiate us from the beasts of the field and help us to discern the difference between good and evil. They instill in young people an awareness of their innate value and help them to develop self-esteem. They enrich the spirit of each of us and of life itself.”
Upon hearing of her passing, members of the Sabine Parish Players sang her praises.
“If any of you have ever enjoyed watching me as an actor, musician, public speaker or entertainer of any sort, take a moment to thank this lady,” said Schylar Matt Ebarb. “She let a wideeyed 16-year-old me into her theatre and gave me a love for the stage. She was a tough teacher and director, a polished professional and a great actress in her own right. Thank you for everything, Mrs. Bozeman.”
Mary was born in Huntington, Texas, in 1932, the daughter of a Methodist minister, the Rev. Robert Armstrong Bozeman and Maxie Herrington Bozeman. Her father was tragically killed in an auto-train accident near Clarence on March 13, 1940. His death was devastating to Mary, who was eight years old at the time and fully aware that his demise was final. However, out of that experience grew the powerful message about life and death portrayed in her one-woman show “Sim, One Night With A Lady Undertaker From Texas.” Following the death of Mary’s father, Maxie Bozeman moved her four children ages eight, six, four and eighteen months to Belmont. Mary’s mother died almost 40 years later on May 20, 1978.
A sister to Mary, Martha Griffith, said, “Mary’s theatrical nature was evident throughout her childhood. All her life, Mary’s vivid imagination has highly influenced her responses to emotionally charged situations.”
She graduated from Belmont High School. She holds a BA degree from Centenary College in Shreveport in Speech and English and an MA in Theatre from Baylor University in Dallas. She was a member of the Actor’s Equity Association.
Bozeman has three siblings: James Richard Bozeman of Lafayette was a cardiovascular surgeon and died May 24, 2018. Martha Griffith is a retired school teacher. Robert Ray Bozeman worked for the Social Security office in Natchitoches for 35 years.
She has one son, Robert Charles Bozeman Rains, by her marriage to Charles Rains, who was a professor at Centenary College. Her son is retired from AOL. He holds a doctorate in music and taught at a college in Virginia.