Manhattan with Lee Strasberg. She also staged a play with boys at a public works settlement house and worked for Broadway producers Eddie Dowling, Oscar Serling and Lewis Gensler, and assisted Theresa Helburn at The Theatre Guild. Together with St. John Terrell, Heflin co-founded the Bucks County Playhouse, serving as director and company manager. Heflin then began a career in radio with CBS as a staff researcher, writer and interviewer for the popular We, the People series. Her interviews with such theatrical luminaries and popular cultural icons as Charlie Chaplin, Salvador Dalí, Bette Davis, Helen Hayes, John Huston, Gene Kelly, Sinclair Lewis and Walt Disney provided her with primary source materials that shaped her subsequent work on the stage and in the classroom. Teaching career From 1956 to 1977, Heflin served as the Director of Speech and Drama at Mount Vernon College until being named professor emeritus. While serving as Faculty Advisor to the Prep Players and Curtain Callers student theatre groups, Heflin also produced several theatre performances at Mount Vernon. In a formal ceremony marking her retirement from Mount Vernon College in Washington, DC, Heflin chided the administration for insufficient support of the theatre curriculum, decrying "a shoddy economy wave which has capsized the theatre arts curricula in many universities and colleges, including Mount Vernon. Relegating theatre and other communications training to chance encounters with well-intentioned, sometimes underpaid or untrained guides, or chopping them from the curricula, violates academic principles in all areas. Theatre arts among the liberal arts are the roots of the civilized balance in an overpowered globe." Personal life Julia was married to journalist and public relations advisor Martin Heflin, whose brother Van Heflin and sister Frances Heflin, were both film and Broadway actors. Julia's daughter, Marta Heflin, appeared on Broadway and in Hollywood films, and worked as a cabaret singer in New York until her death in 2013. References 1911 births 2007 deaths American theatre managers and producers George Washington University faculty Smith College alumni