Elaine Stritch, Acerbic Tony and Emmy Winner, Dies at 89
Elaine Stritch: Ladies Who Lunch (Company) - AMAZING VERSION
It is being reported that she died at age 89.
She used to be a favorite performer of Noel Coward in his musicals. She also did some later work on Broadway 
Truly one of a kind. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I suppose, but what she did, she owned.
It’s just what every true long-time NY-er fears - move out of the city, return to your home town, and you’ll be dead within a year.
RIP Ms. Stritch. Loved ya’.
Wow, I was just yesterday listening to a show she starred in (Goldilocks) with Don Ameche. She was a major talent, and will be sorely missed.
More recently, she was wonderful as Jack Donaghy’s sassy mother, Colleen, on 30 Rock.
I was going to mention her links with Noel Coward when I entered the thread. She must have been almost the last of that generation of actors left.
This anecdote came from conservative pundit and Broadway fanatic Mark Steyn:
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"In November 2000 I found myself on Ned Sherrin’s BBC show “Loose Ends”, being broadcast live from New York. It was in the middle of the long post-election-night chad-dimpling phase of the Bush-Gore contest and tensions were running high. Everyone else on the show – Elaine Stritch, Michael Feinstein – was pro-Gore, pro-abortion, anti-capital punishment, etc, and the political talk didn’t go so well. But then Ned asked Miss Stritch about her early days on Broadway and she mentioned that “Civilization (Bongo Bongo Bongo)” had been her first solo.
“Oh, that’s a marvelous song,” I enthused.
“Do you remember who wrote it, Mark?” Ned asked.
“Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman,” I said.
“How do you know that?” asked Miss Stritch in wonder.
After the show we had a glass of wine and the talk turned to chads again and politics reared its ugly head. But, as we parted, Miss Stritch sportingly said to me, “You’re full of shit. But at least you know who wrote ‘Bongo Bongo Bongo’.”*
A brilliant performer and a Broadway legend. We aren’t likely to see someone like her again any time soon. One of a kind for sure.
[Let’s get one thing straight Skippy…](YouTube? v=OnnGAanLlF8)
I only really know her from a UK sitcom she was in with Donald Sinden called Two’s Company.
Mrs. Cheesesteak got to work with her for one night at a benefit concert. Completely insane. Awesome insane, but insane nonetheless.
Two incidents from that night are seared into our psyche’s and have become running gags in the household.
The first has to do with accounting for Ms. Stritch’s expenses. She’s haranguing the producer, put this down, that down, add a tip, I tip better than that! The coup de grace is when she tells him “Put a line under it and add it up… why is that line crooked?”
The other is when she corralled my wife backstage, handed her an orange and a grapefruit and said “I’m diabetic, squeeze these into a glass.” Backstage, with no utensils or cups, just squeeze some citrus.
I asked my wife what she did… “It’s Elaine Stritch, I squeezed 'em. Found a cup somewhere, ripped the fruit apart with my bare hands and squeezed them.”
I lived on the same street as and went to high school with a guy who had been Elaine’s closest collaborator for the last ten or so years. He arranged all the music for her shows and played piano in her one-woman performances.
He’s pretty devastated right now.