Merely because Elaine Paige played one of her songs this morning on her Radio 2 show, my thoughts turn to one of my favourite showbiz artists ever - the fantastic Elaine Stritch!
Still very much in the business (at the age of 83!), Elaine cannot be summed up succinctly - a career that spans seven decades is not to be sniffed at!
Needless to say, the "Grand Dame of Broadway" has worked with them all - Noel Coward, Rogers & Hart, Irving Berlin, Ethel Merman, Jule Styne, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, John Lahr, Hal Prince, and of course Stephen Sondheim. She trained at drama school alongside giants of the acting world, including Marlon Brando (with whom she had a brief, if apparently unconsummated, flirtation) and Bea Arthur.
In the 1970s she moved to the UK, taking up a long residence in one of the suites at the Savoy. It was during this time that she became most famous to British audiences, playing alongside Donald Sinden in the hugely successful ITV comedy Two's Company, and appearing several times on Parkinson, and in Tales of the Unexpected and Jackanory.
After the death of her British husband in 1982, she returned to the US, where she has not stopped working since - a variety of TV shows from The Cosby Show to The Big Gay Sketch Show. And along the way she continued to appear on stage, most notably her award-winning one woman show At Liberty.
It was at the UK run of this show at the Old Vic in 2002 that we were privileged to see the divine Ms Stritch on stage for the first time. Madame Arcati was particularly thrilled, having been a fan of hers since acquiring a copy of her eponymous 1960s album Stritch. And she certainly didn't disappoint! Interspersing songs from her long repertoire with snippets and anecdotes from her life and theatrical career, it was a magical occasion - and a rare opportunity to see a true legend perform.
Here's a few bits and pieces I found, as a tribute to this remarkable lady...
The song EP played this morning on Radio 2:
Here's Elaine in conversation (at a gay centre benefit just last November) with American gossip columnist Liz Smith, known as "The Grand Dame of Dish", with whom Elaine has been friends for decades (see above photo of them as young ladies):
With Millicent Martin, Marian Montgomery and David Kernan in Ned Sherrin's 1979 ITV series Song by Song - a show that I have absolutely no recollection of whatsoever (bizarrely, but then I was merely a teenager, and had yet to really discover my penchant for showtunes):
One of Elaine's classic Sondheim numbers:
And her show-stopper, also one of Sondheim's greatest...
I love this woman!
Elaine Stritch on the Broadway Database
Elaine Stritch on IMDB
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