Peggy Webber, the versatile and prolific actress whose remarkable career spanned radio, television and film, has died at the age of 100.
Webber died Saturday of natural causes at an independent-living facility in Napa, California, her son Rob Sinskey told The Hollywood Reporter. She had moved from Los Angeles after being evacuated from her home during the January 2025 wildfires.
Over a career that lasted for decades, Webber became one of the busiest voices in American radio. She appeared in thousands of broadcasts and shared microphones with some of the era’s biggest stars, including Basil Rathbone, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall and Harold Lloyd.
She was also a familiar voice on Dragnet, portraying Ma Friday, the mother of Jack Webb’s Sgt. Joe Friday. Her work eventually took her from radio studios to the big screen, where she worked with legendary directors Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.
A Career Built in Radio
Webber was born Margaret Webber on Sept. 15, 1925, in Laredo, Texas, the daughter of an oil driller. She began performing when she was very young, entertaining audiences during intermissions at silent movies.
Her professional radio career began in San Antonio when she was just 11 years old.
After moving with her family to Arizona, Webber graduated from Tucson High School at 16. She already had her own radio program in Tucson, but after her father’s death left the family financially devastated, she and her mother moved to Hollywood.
Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Webber walked into CBS without an appointment. There, she encountered a young page named Bob Carroll, who would later become a writer on I Love Lucy. Carroll helped her obtain an audition.
For her audition, Webber performed impressions of performers including Martha Raye, Shirley Temple and Stepin Fetchit, weaving the impressions into an improvised story. She impressed the casting staff and was hired almost immediately.
Her early assignments included The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and commercial work in which she provided the voice of Ingrid Bergman.
By 1946, Time magazine reported that Webber had performed approximately 150 different characters across some 2,500 broadcasts in only three years.
Her credits continued to grow. She appeared on The Adventures of the Saint, Lux Radio Theatre, The Life of Riley, Fibber McGee and Molly, Have Gun, Will Travel, Broadway Is My Beat and many other popular programs.
She also appeared alongside Harold Lloyd on the Harold Lloyd Comedy Theatre and worked frequently with writer-producer Norman Corwin.
From Dragnet to Hollywood
Webber had already worked with Jack Webb on programs including Escape and This Is Your FBI when he asked her to participate in a 1949 radio pilot for a new crime series called Dragnet.
The program became a major success, and Webber later became associated with the role of Ma Friday, Joe Friday’s mother.
When Dragnet moved to television in 1952, Webber continued to appear on the series. She returned to the show when it was revived in 1967 and also appeared in other Jack Webb productions, including Adam-12 and Emergency!
Her career was not limited to acting. During the 1940s, she created a television comedy called Oh, Miss Tubbs, about a schoolteacher, for experimental Los Angeles station W6XAO.
Webber later said she submitted her scripts to CBS in New York and believed the network used her concept as the basis for the popular comedy Our Miss Brooks. She considered taking legal action, but said her attorney, Roy Cohn, warned her that suing CBS could jeopardize her future work with the network.
She also wrote and produced Treasure of Literature, which brought classic works to television audiences in Los Angeles. Her work earned her a nomination at the first Emmy Awards in 1949.
Working With Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock
Webber’s radio career brought her into contact with Orson Welles, who later cast her as Lady Macduff in his 1948 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Welles wanted her portrayal to be youthful and unconventional rather than traditional. Webber recalled that he specifically asked her to play Lady Macduff as a glamorous young woman and to use a Scottish accent.
She said she spent roughly three years working on the production and also provided replacement voices for other characters, including Jeanette Nolan’s Lady Macbeth.
Webber later appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), a film inspired by a true story.
She played Miss Dennerly, an insurance clerk whose mistaken identification of musician Manny Balestrero, played by Henry Fonda, helps set the film’s tragic events in motion. The movie remains notable as Hitchcock’s only feature based on real events.
Webber also became known to horror fans for her leading role in The Screaming Skull (1958). She played a newlywed who moves into a mansion where her husband’s first wife died under mysterious circumstances.
The film, which drew inspiration from Hitchcock’s Rebecca, became a cult favorite. Its marketing famously promised a free burial to anyone who died of fright while watching it.
A Life in Television and Theatre
Webber continued working steadily in television, appearing in programs such as Kings Row, Cheyenne, M Squad, Climax!, The Millionaire, Gunsmoke, Wanted: Dead or Alive, I Spy, Night Gallery and The Waltons.
Her film credits also included Her Adventurous Night (1946), Submarine Command (1952) and The Space Children (1958).
Away from the screen, Webber remained deeply involved in theatre and live performance. She and The Addams Family actor Ted Cassidy owned The New Hope Inn, a restaurant and performance venue in Santa Monica. She also operated a theatre company whose members included Gilligan’s Island star Bob Denver.
In the late 1970s, Webber returned to radio productions through Sears Radio Theatre.
In 1984, she founded the California Artists Radio Theatre, an organization dedicated to preserving and reviving the tradition of radio drama. The company produced adaptations of works by Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, as well as contemporary material.
Among the performers who took part in its productions were Michael York, Samantha Eggar, Roddy McDowall, Ed Asner, William Shatner and David Warner.
Still Performing Into Her 90s
Webber’s passion for radio never faded.
Even as she approached her 90s, she continued performing and producing radio dramas. In a 2015 interview, she described her commitment to the craft as a responsibility to honor the opportunities she had received throughout her career.
Her personal life included two marriages. She married Robert Sinskey in 1951, and the couple moved to Japan the following year while he worked as a researcher for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. They divorced in 1967.
In 1983, Webber married Irish actor Sean McClory, known for films including The Quiet Man and The Californians. McClory died in 2003.
Webber is survived by her son, daughters Patricia and Teresa, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
From childhood performances in Texas to thousands of radio broadcasts, Hollywood films and decades spent preserving audio drama, Peggy Webber built a career that bridged several generations of entertainment.
Her voice may have been her greatest instrument, but her legacy was much larger: she was an actress, writer, producer, director and tireless champion of radio drama who continued creating long after many of her contemporaries had retired.