BritishTheatre.com is saddened to report that theatre legend Elaine Stritch passed away at her home this morning, aged 89.
Her stage credits included Loco (1946), Bus Stop (1955 – Tony Nominated), Sail Away (1961), Company (1970), A Delicate Balance (1996), Small Craft Warnings (1973), The Gingerbread Lady (1974), Showboat (1994) and A Little Night Music (2010).
Her one woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty in 2001 was a Tony Award winner and played seasons in both the UK and USA.
During her career, which spanned seven decades she appeared in television shows including The Growing Paynes (1949), The Goodyear Television Playhouse (1953-55), The Ed Sullivan Show (1954), she was also the first and original Trixie Norton in the pilot for The Honeymooners sketch with Jackie Gleeson, Art Carney and Pert Kelton.
On the big screen she appeared with Charlton Heston in Three Violent People (1956), with Rock Hudson in A Farewell To Arms (1957) and opposite Tony Curtis in The Perfect Furlough and as the nurse in the remake of The Spiral Staircase (1975). She joined the ensemble of Cocoon- The Return (1988), played Winona Ryder’s grandmother in the film Autumn in New York (2000) and appeared in Monster In Law (2005) playing opposite Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez as Fonda’s mother-in-law.
Elaine won an Emmy Award in 1993 for her guest role in Law And Order and another in 2004, for the television documentary of her one-woman show. Most recently her recurring role as Jack Donaghy’s mother Colleen on 30 Rock won her a third Emmy.
She was perhaps best known in the UK for the ITV sitcom Two’s Company with Donald Sinden (1975-79).
Her recent documentary Shoot Me recently had its premiere in New York City.
She will perhaps be forever identified with two great songs from Sondheim musicals. The first – The Ladies Who Lunch from Company. George Furth, who wrote the story and spoken dialogue for Company, had witnessed an inebriated Stritch asking a bartender, “Just give me a bottle of vodka and a floorplan,” and this anecdote inspired the lyric. In later years, after she had become sober through rehab, she performed the song in cabaret with a wrenching emotional identification that seemed clearly to come from autobiographical flashbacks to the waste she had nearly made of her life. The second – I’m Still Here from Follies – a defiant anthem of a showbiz trouper who had survived professional failures, private crises and changing fashions to remain in demand into old age.
An impeccable professional, she boasted of having only missed tow shows through indisposition over seven decades.
Perhaps the best last words are hers “I love audiences. My God, the best friends in the world!”
Elaine Stritch Born 2 February 1925; Died 17 July 2014.
