Designing Women: Dixie Carter

From the Washington Post:

Dixie Carter, 70, a stage and television actress who helped expand the possibilities of American and Southern femininity as a star of the long-running TV sitcom "Designing Women," died April 10.

Dixie Virginia Carter was born May 25, 1939, in McLemoresville, Tenn., and it was not long thereafter that she began to dream of an operatic career.

Her most famous role was as wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker in "Designing Women," a CBS sitcom that chronicled the work and personal lives of four women in an Atlanta interior design firm.

Miss Carter died at a hospital in Houston. She had cancer.