Maxine Stuart, 94, Dies - Acted on Stage, Film and TV - NYTimes.com Maxine Stuart's stage, film and television career spanned more than six decades, including a recurring role on the soap opera "The Edge of Night" and a guest spot on a memorable episode of "The Twilight Zone." But she was equally well known to readers of Helene Hanff's nonfiction books "84, Charing Cross Road" and "Underfoot in Show Business" as Ms. Hanff's deliciously dizzy sidekick in their attempts to make it on Broadway in the 1930s and "40s. Ms. Stuart, who died on June 6 at 94, makes several cameo appearances in "84," as the book is known to its ardent fans. First published in 1970, it is an epistolary memoir of Ms. Hanff's long correspondence with the staff of a London bookshop. In the 1987 film version of the book, starring Anne Bancroft as Ms. Hanff, Ms. Stuart is played by Jean De Baer. In "Underfoot," Ms. Stuart is a genuine co-star. That book, published in 1962, recounts Ms. Hanff's years in New York as a struggling playwright in tandem with Ms. Stuart's as a struggling actress. The warm, adventurous, impecunious friendship of the two young women began in the late 1930s in the backstage ladies" room of the Morosco Theater, after Ms. Hanff saw one of the many flops in which Ms. Stuart seemed condemned to appear. Her description of Ms. Stuart's daily life - the voice and diction lessons (which entailed screaming "Oh, NO!" at top volume in the bathroom of her parents" apartment); the audition rounds; the elation of being cast; the deflation of closing - is a window onto the existence of a working, and sometimes out-of-work, actor in the years before television devoured Broadway. The book is also a visitors" manual to a vanished New York - the New York of Schrafft's, the Automat and residential hotels for nice young women - in which it was actually possible to live by the young Ms. Stuart's credo, "Nothing should cost anything." In Ms. Stuart's resourceful hands, even Broadway cost nothing. Several nights a week, the two friends, wearing no coats, would arrive at a theater of their choice in time for the Act 1 intermission. On the sidewalk, they mingled with audience members who had gone outside to smoke. Even in the coldest weather, no self-respecting New York theatergoer on a cigarette break bothered with a coat. Drifting inside, the young women made for the best seats without coats on them and sat down. They saw many plays - minus the first acts - and caught many colds. Maxine Shlivek was born on June 28, 1918, in Deal, N.J., and reared in Lawrence, on Long Island, and Manhattan. Her film credits include "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) and "Private Benjamin" (1980). On television, she portrayed the stenographer Grace O'Keefe on "The Edge of Night." Ms. Stuart was seen on dozens of other shows, including "Perry Mason," "Dr. Kildare," "Chicago Hope" and "The Wonder Years," for which she received a 1989 Emmy nomination as Kevin's piano teacher. She had a pivotal guest role in "Eye of the Beholder," a "Twilight Zone" episode first broadcast in 1960. Ms. Stuart played a hospital patient - her face, never seen, is swathed in bandages - who endures repeated failed operations in an attempt to correct her freakish appearance. When the bandages are removed, doctors pronounce the latest operation a failure too. The patient's face is disclosed to be that of a beautiful woman, from that point on played by Donna Douglas. The doctors and nurses are revealed to have hideous, porcine faces. That Ms. Stuart was deemed not pretty enough to play the unveiled patient in a show about beauty as a socially constructed concept was an irony not lost on her, she said in interviews. After a brief early marriage that ended in divorce, Ms. Stuart married Frank Maxwell, an actor. Their marriage ended in divorce; Ms. Stuart's third husband, David Shaw, a playwright and screenwriter, died in 2007. Ms. Stuart is survived by three daughters, Chris Ann Maxwell, who confirmed her mother's death, at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif.; Ellen Shaw Agress; and Liz Shaw Baron; four grandchildren; and a great-grandchild. Ms. Hanff died in 1997, at 80. Before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, Ms. Stuart made repeated, if short-lived, outings on the New York stage. "Maxine appeared in 11 Broadway plays, most of which opened on a Tuesday night," Ms. Hanff wrote. On Wednesday came the flop notices, on Thursday an empty house, on Friday the closing notice went up, on Saturday the show closed and on Sunday Maxine slept it off. "And so, on Monday," Ms. Hanff continued, "she was once more to be found in her parents" apartment on West End Avenue ready to resume the normal daily life of a glamorous young actress by screaming "Oh, NO!" in the bathroom."