REMEMBER Piper Laurie as Paul Newman's crippled girlfriend in The Hustler? It was a riveting performance from the one-time Hollywood starlet, and many people thought Piper's acting career would take a new dramatic turn. But it didn't. Just after that movie, on her thirtieth birthday, Piper married a young writer and disappeared from movies.
Now, fifteen years later, Piper is back in a spine-tingling suspense movie- Brian De Palma's Carrie, the story of a shy high school girl possessed of a terrifying power. She is also totally dominated by her fanatically religious mother and ridiculed by her classmates.
Sissy Spacek plays the girl, Carrie, and Piper plays her mother, an intense, driven woman deserted by her husband, who not only tires to keep her teenage daughter ignorant of the facts of life, but also instills in the girl a crippling sense of guilt and sin about her body and emotions.
What the mother doesn't know is that young Carrie possesses the power of "telekinesis"- the ability to control objects and people with her mind. This power becomes Carrie's weapon, and one of the people she unleashes it upon is her domineering mother.
Piper's new role is in startling contrast to the stream of lightweight movies which began her career. She was just 18 years old when Universal-International Studios signed her to a seven-year Hollywood contract. It was 1950, a time for changing the natural high-school beauty into a smooth, well-groomed starlet, with a new name to match the new look.
Piper was "launched" in a movie called Louisa. Then she played opposite Donald O'Connor in The Milkman, and starred in several movies with the young Tony Curtis, among them The Prince Who Was a Thief (his first starring role) and Son of Ali Baba. Movie followed movie with Piper starring opposite such screen heroes as Tyrone Power, Rock Hudson, Van Johnson, Victor Mature and Dana Andrews.
But she was restless during those years, tired of being typed as a sweet young thing. Finally she obtained her release from the long-term Universal contract after completing Kelly and Me, and set off for new York and a new career in the theatre and television. She left her Hollywood home and moved into a large apartment on Central Park West and was soon playing a wide range of television parts. She won an Emmy nomination for the TV drama The Road That Led Afar, and a second for her portrayal of the alcoholic wife in TV's The Days of Wine and Rose.
It was while Piper was acting in a performance of "Rosemary" with a group at the Actors Studio that producer-director Robert Rossen saw her and signed her for The Hustler.
Piper's marriage to her writer-husband Joseph Morgenstern, and the birth of their daughter, Anna Grace, took priority over her career, but she has recently taken time out for occasional acting appearances. A few years back, she starred in a Broadway revival of "The Glass Menagerie", and just before Carrie, she starred in a film made in New York for National educational television. It was called A Woman's Rebel, and in it Piper played Margaret Sanger, the controversial advocate of birth control, from girlhood to a woman in her 70's.
Now Carrie has brought Piper back to Hollywood, the town she turned her back on because she wanted more demanding and fulfilling roles. In fifteen years, the changes in movie-making have been considerable and Piper was quick to notice them. "At Universal, if you dared come in with an idea, you got into trouble," she recalls. "Today, on the other hand, I see Brian De Palma's generosity in dealing with the young actors and actresses around him. He really listens to these kids. I think that some of them are a little self-indulgent. They want to have every other line changed so that ti's more comfortable for them, which I find rather far-fetched. But then, this may simply be sour grapes on my part, since I remember how much even the slightest suggestion that I used to make would be resented."
The change in the Hollywood Piper once knew may well lure her back again into the movies. She obviously enjoyed her return to the tinseltown where it all began for her, and found that as an actress, things have definitely changed for the better. All she needs now are the demanding roles like the one she has in Carrie which is quite a shocker.
by Sue Clarke

The article is accompanied by a montage of black and white photo images of Piper, mostly from the motion picture Carrie, though a small inset of Tony Curtis and Piper- Piper with Tony Curtis way back in 1951; A knife wielding Margaret White- Piper as the obsessed mother in Carrie; A scene from the prom disaster- Terror and destruction explode at a school prom in this scene from Carrie; Piper as Margaret, holding her daugher Carrie- Piper Lauie left Hollywood and concentrated on marriage and a career on TV and the stage, now she returns in the violent Carrie; Carrie, as prom queen with date Tommy- Carrie and Tommy (William Katt) are chosen King and Queen of the school prom, an occasion ending in disaster.