I assume this Birmingham native and actress with many film and television credits from the late 1960's until the late 1990's has retired. Let's investigate.
Strickland was born in the Magic City on May 18, 1947, to parents Theodosia and Lynn Strickland. Her father owned a tire shop. You can see his ad in the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages at the end of this post. Presumably she attended schools in Birmingham, and as noted below went to Florida State University.
In 1969 she made two appearances as Dorcas Trilling on the daytime series Dark Shadows. Four years later she turned up in a Broadway production that closed after six previews and one performance, "Status Quo Vadis". In that same year she had a role in an episode of The Mary Tyler More Show and so began a string of frequent appearances in films and television that lasted until 1999.
Her films include The Drowning Pool [1975] with Paul Newman; Bound for Glory [1976] with David Carradine; Who'll Stop the Rain [1978] with Nick Nolte; Norma Rae [1979] with Sally Field; and Uncommon Valor [1983] with Gene Hackman. Strickland was extremely active on television for three decades with appearances on Police Story, Hawaii Five-O, Bob Newhart, Kojak, Lou Grant, MASH, Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacy, Dallas, Law and Order, ER, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Seinfeld, JAG, and many others.
She also had recurring roles in several TV series. These include The Insiders [1985-86], What a Country 1986-87], HeartBeat [1988-89], Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman [1993], and Melrose Place [1994-98]. You can find more details about many of her roles at FilmReference.com
On April 20, 1988, ABC premiered HeartBeat, a medical drama that focused on the staff and patients of a women's clinic. The founders were two female doctors and a nurse practitioner. One of the doctors was played by Kate Mulgrew, later to captain a star ship in Star Trek: Voyager. Gail Strickland played the nurse practitioner, Marilyn McGrath, who was a lesbian and the first such main character in a U.S. television prime time program. Her partner Patty appeared in a few episodes.
Ahead of the premier of the show People magazine ran a nice profile of Strickland by Susan Toepfer and David Hutchings that reveals some things about her background. Lynn and Theodosia raised their five children in a Baptist household. It's worth quoting a bit from the article:
Strickland may have inherited her independence from Theodosia. In 1957, when Gail was 11, her father, Lynn, died of a heart attack. Theodosia took over his tire business and managed it successfully enough to put all five children through college. “My dad’s death was terrible for all of us,” Gail says, “but it pulled the family together.”
A tall, athletic kid, Strickland wore a size-12 dress at age 12. “I played football with my brothers,” she says, then refines the memory: “Often, I was the football.” That posed a problem as she entered her teens. “When boys started looking differently at girls,” she says, “I wasn’t one of the ones they looked differently at.” Struggling for attention, she wrote plays and performed them in front of friends. At Florida State University, she made her mark as a gymnast and clown. “I didn’t know what Broadway was,” she says, “but I knew it was my goal.”
She reached it in 1973, in Status Quo Vadis, which had a short run. Such films as The Drowning Pool, Norma Rae and Protocol followed, along with countless TV guest shots. Still, says Strickland, “before Heartbeat, had you ever heard of me? That’s frustrating.”
In the article Strickland mentions a long-distance relationship with Neil Baker, a marketing consultant from Boston and their plans to marry in December 1988. I have been unable to find further information about that event.
According to the IMDB, Strickland's final credit was the 2008 film My Apocalypse. Her only other credits after 1999 were thirteen episodes of the series First Monday in 2002 in which she played a conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
More comments below.
Strickland and Paul Newman getting a bit wet in
The Drowning Pool [1975], based on one of Ross Macdonald's Lew Harper novels.
She seems dryer here.
A scene from Norma Rae. Strickland was able to return to her native state for this one, largely filmed in Opelika.
From the "Voice of Thunder" episode of The Rookies, first broadcast December 9, 1975
The cast of HeartBeat
I think this image has Strickland and
Gina Hecht in their roles as lovers Marilyn McGrath and Patty on
HeartBeat but the
source did not say.
Birmingham Yellow Pages, 1945
