From People
Judy Pace, a model and actress known for her roles in Peyton Place and the celebrated TV movie Brian's Song, has died. She was 83.
Pace's daughters, attorney Shawn Pace Mitchell and actress Julia Pace Mitchell, announced through a spokesperson that their mother "died peacefully in her sleep" on March 11 while visiting family in Marina Del Rey, Calif.
Pace was born in Los Angeles in 1942. Before beginning her acting career, she trained as a model, becoming the youngest in the Ebony Fashion Fair's 1961-1962 tour. She made her film debut in 1963's 13 Frightened Girls, playing a Liberian teenager, a role that launched her career and led to her becoming the first Black woman under contract at Columbia Studios.
Pace went on to star as Vickie Fletcher in the primetime drama series Peyton Place from 1968 to 1969. She won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series in 1970 for her trailblazing role as Pat Walters in The Young Lawyers (1969-1971).
Her other film and television credits include The Fortune Cookie (1966), Three in the Attic (1968), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Frogs (1972) and Cool Breeze (1972).
She starred in the celebrated 1971 TV movie Brian's Song, playing the wife of football legend Gale Sayers. The movie, which also starred James Caan, was watched by 55 million people — half of those in the United States who owned a television at the time — when it aired, per Variety.
Pace also guest-starred on many popular TV series, including Bewitched, Good Times, I Spy, I Dream of Jeannie, Mod Squad, That's My Mama and Sanford and Son. Her final acting credit was a four-episode arc in Beauty and the Baller in 2017.
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