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Dorothy
Loudon (1933-2003) might have been made a Broadway
superstar for her Tony win as the hilarious Mrs. Hannigan in Annie
(1977), but she had been going strong long before that.
When she first moved to New York City, she became a lounge singer,
mingling song with ad-libbed comedy, and winning featured spots on The
Perry Como Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, but she made her
stage debut in 1962, singing Stephen Sondheim's "Truly
Content" in The World of Jules Feiffer, directed by Mike
Nichols. She came to the attention of New York audiences, earning
rave reviews and Tony nominations in a series of flops, such as There's
Nowhere to Go But Up and The Fig Leaves Are Falling.
But she took everything in her stride: when an fan told her that he had
seen her in Comedy Tonight, she responded with, "Oh, you
poor thing! I feel so bad for you!" She was wonderful
as the demented mother in Alan Jay Lerner's Lolita, My Love and
got herself another Tony nomination as recently widowed woman who falls
into an affair with a married man in Ballroom (1979). She
succeeded Angela Lansbury as Mrs.
Lovett in Sweeney Todd, and was considered so good enough to
have opened in the show. Her non-musical triumphs included
appearances as a washed-up television comedienne as a
sardine-serving-maid in Michael Frayn's Noises Off! (1983)
and as a violinist to Katherine
Hepburn's pianist in The West Side Waltz (1981). She
died of cancer in New York City in 2003. |
