Dorothy Loudon

Dorothy Loudon (September 17, 1925 – November 15, 2003) was an American actress and singer born in Boston, Massachusetts, who maintained an active Broadway career from 1962 to 2002. She was raised in Claremont, New Hampshire, and Indianapolis, Indiana, and attended Syracuse University on a drama scholarship before leaving without a degree. She subsequently moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Early in her career she performed as a singer in nightclubs, including New York's Blue Angel, where she combined song with improvised comic material. Television appearances on The Perry Como Show and The Ed Sullivan Show followed, and in 1962 she joined The Garry Moore Show as the replacement for Carol Burnett.

Loudon's stage career began in 1962 with The World of Jules Feiffer, a play featuring incidental music by Stephen Sondheim and directed by Mike Nichols. That same year she made her Broadway debut in Nowhere to Go but Up, a production that ran only two weeks but earned her strong notices and the Theatre World Award. She also appeared as a replacement in Anything Goes in 1962 and took on a role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1963. Later Broadway appearances during the 1960s included The Apple Tree in 1967 and Noël Coward's Sweet Potato in 1968. In 1969, The Fig Leaves Are Falling closed after only four performances, though the role brought Loudon the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance and a Tony Award nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. That same year she appeared in a revival of Three Men on a Horse directed by George Abbott. Lolita, My Love, in which she was also cast, closed during its pre-Broadway tryout in 1971, and a revival of The Women followed in 1973.

The defining role of Loudon's career came in 1977 when she originated the part of Miss Hannigan, the malevolent orphanage administrator, in Annie. The performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. In the show she introduced the songs "Little Girls" and "Easy Street." She returned to the character in 1990 in Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge, which closed during its pre-Broadway engagement in Washington, D.C.

In 1979, director Michael Bennett cast Loudon as Bea Asher in Ballroom, a widow who becomes romantically involved with a man she meets at a local dance hall. The role brought her a second Tony Award nomination for Best Lead Actress in a Musical as well as a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Musical. She performed the number "Fifty Percent" from the show at that year's Tony Awards ceremony. In 1980, she succeeded Angela Lansbury in the role of Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. The following year she co-starred with Katharine Hepburn and Julia Barr in the play The West Side Waltz. In 1982 she received the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. She appeared in the 1983 Jerry Herman revue Jerry's Girls and later that same year played Dotty Otley, a miserable middle-aged actress, in Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off. At the 38th Annual Tony Awards in 1984, Loudon performed "Broadway Baby" from Follies, and her work at that ceremony and others demonstrated her continued prominence in the Broadway community. The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Work followed in 1984.

Loudon's subsequent Broadway credits included Comedy Tonight in 1994, Show Boat in 1996, Sweet Adeline in 1997, and the Signature Theatre production Over and Over in 1999. She was cast as Carlotta Vance in the Lincoln Center Theater production of Dinner at Eight in 2002 but left the production in November of that year due to illness and was replaced by Marian Seldes.

Her film work was limited to two features: she played a photography agent in Garbo Talks in 1984 and portrayed Southern eccentric Serena Dawes in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1997. On television, she starred in the 1979 series Dorothy, in which she played a former showgirl teaching music and drama at a boarding school for girls; the series ran for one season. She also appeared in episodes of Magnum, P.I. and Murder, She Wrote in 1986, and was featured in several broadcast tributes to Broadway and its performers.

Loudon was married to composer Norman Paris from 1971 until his death. She died in Manhattan on November 15, 2003, at the age of 78, from cancer, and was interred at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. She was survived by two stepchildren from Paris's first marriage.