Judith Lowry made her stage debut in 1913 in a stock company in Washington, D.C. Later in 1921 when she became pregnant with her first child she would retire from acting to raise her family. She resumed her acting career in 1952 after her youngest of 9 children, Martha, turned 18. She made several stage appearances and labored in occasional bit parts in film and television from the 1950s until she began to get more substantial roles in her eighties. Lowry had an uncredited role in Valley of the Dolls (1967) as Aunt Amy. She had character parts in such films as The Anderson Tapes and Cold Turkey. Her best-remembered role is that of the acid-tongued, no nonsense Mother Dexter on the 1970s sitcom Phyllis, which starred Cloris Leachman. This was Lowry’s last major acting role because she died of a heart attack during the series’ final season. One of the last episodes she filmed before her death, “Mother Dexter’s Wedding”, marked the final appearance of veteran actor Burt Mustin, who played her equally superannuated bridegroom, Arthur Lanson. By the time the episode aired in December 1976, Lowry had died at age 86, and the 92-year-old Mustin, who died in January 1977, was too ill to see it. After the airing of “Mother Dexter’s Wedding”, five more episodes of Phyllis followed in which Lowry appeared.

She also appeared on stage, most notably off Broadway in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, and on Broadway in a small role in Archibald MacLeish’s drama J.B. Judith Lowry met her future husband, actor Rudd Lowry, while performing on stage. Rudd had recently returned from serving in the US Army during World War I as a Staff sergeant in an army hospital when they met. Judith and Rudd had six sons and three daughters. All six of her sons served with the United States Armed Forces. Judith Lowry collapsed and died from a heart attack while walking down a Greenwich Village street with her son Rayphield Semmes Lowry on November 29, 1976. She was buried next to her husband, Rudd Lowry, in Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale, New York. she was 86 years old.