Colleen Dewhurst, Award-Winning Broadway And Television Actress

LEWISBORO, N.Y. - Colleen Dewhurst, who more than any other American actress was associated with the plays of Eugene O'Neill, died yesterday. She was 65.

Miss Dewhurst died at her home in this New York City suburb, said Jan Stutts, a spokeswoman for the Westchester County medical examiner's office. She died of natural causes, said Stutts, who wouldn't elaborate.

The actress, who won two Tony and two Obie awards, also appeared on the big and small screens. She won three Emmys, including one for her guest appearance as Candice Bergen's mother on CBS' "Murphy Brown."

Her film roles included a minor part in this year's "Dying Young," which starred her son Campbell Scott, and a role in Woody Allen's 1977 "Annie Hall."

She also had been president of the Actors' Equity union since 1985.

On Broadway, she won a Tony award in 1974 as best actress for her performance as Josie Hogan, the lonely but big-hearted farm girl in O'Neill's "A Moon for the Misbegotten."

Her last Broadway appearances were in 1988, when she alternated roles in O'Neill's masterpiece "Long Day's Journey into Night," the playwright's exorcism of his own devastating family life, and "Ah, Wilderness!," his only comedy.

"I always say that I am not an O'Neill expert," she said in a 1988 interview. "I feel all I really know are his women."

Miss Dewhurst decided to change course after 1988, saying she didn't want to be pigeonholed as an actress who only did O'Neill plays.

A native of Montreal, she and her mother moved to Wisconsin after her parents divorced when she was 13.

Miss Dewhurst moved to New York in 1946 and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her Broadway debut in 1952 in a country dance scene in a revival of O'Neill's "Desire under the Elms."

She played Kate in Joseph Papp's 1957 production of "The Taming of the Shrew," and won an Obie award for her performance. She also won an Obie as the sensual Abbie Putman in O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms."

She won a Tony for "All the Way Home" in 1961.

She won an Emmy in 1988 for "Those She Left Behind" and in 1986 for "Between Two Women," both in the outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or a special category.

She married James Vickery in 1947. They divorced in 1959. She also was twice married to and divorced from actor George C. Scott, and they had two sons, Campbell and Alexander.