While Eikenberry has a long list of theater, film and television credits, she is perhaps best known for her portrayal of L.A. Law’s Ann Kelsey
She walked into the lobby of the movie theater, determined not to tell anybody about her situation. However, “Cynthia took one look at me and said ‘what happened to you?’ And I poured the whole story out.” Nixon brought Eikenberry into the audience to see her mother, Ann. Nixon’s mother then took her hand and dragged her up the aisle into the ladies room. “Ann hiked up her blouse and said, ‘You see this little scar on my right breast? That’s all I have to remind me of my breast cancer 11 years ago.’ And all of a sudden, I felt hope,” said Eikenberry. That hope persuaded Eikenberry to seek a second opinion. The news was better this time as her doctor said she was a perfect candidate for a lumpectomy. “I saved my breast,” she said. “It was amazing what Ann Nixon did for me.” Amazing is a description that Eikenberry herself has heard over the years in reference to her stellar career and odds-defying, long-term Hollywood marriage to Tucker. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, she was raised in Madison, Wisconsin before moving to Missouri. She began her college studying anthropology
at Barnard College in New York. In her second year, however, she auditioned for and was accepted into the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut. She met Tucker while the two of them were performing at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. They were later cast in the play Moonchildren, which eventually took them to Broadway in 1972. They married the following year. While Eikenberry has a long list of theater, film and television credits, she is perhaps best known for her portrayal of L.A. Law’s Ann Kelsey alongside Tucker’s Stuart Markowitz. Over the course of the series’ long-run, she received four Emmy nominations, two Golden Globe nominations and a Golden Globe Award. One of the most decorated dramas in television history, the show followed a group of lawyers at the fictitious law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak. In its prime, blessed with a plumb Thursday time slot behind “Cosby” and “Cheers,” the series regularly finished in the top 15. Its legal cases covered big issues of the day, such as the outing of prominent gays and the morality of the death penalty, as well as unusual ones like dwarf tossing and the culpability of a Jewish mohel sued for snipping a bit too much at a circumcision ceremony. The compelling stories would often intermix with the lawyers’ sexy personal entanglements – including the famous storyline where Tucker employs a secret sexual technique called the “Venus Butterfly” to win the hand of Eikenberry. The episode was one of the most talked about of the entire season, and although the “V.B.” was a fictional figment of a writer’s fertile imagination, hordes of viewers wrote the show asking what the ancient sexual practice was.
Aligning practice with policy to improve patient care 97