Elizabeth Parrish

Elizabeth "Betsy" Parrish (February 10, 1925 – December 16, 2022) was an American actress, singer, and acting teacher whose Broadway career spanned from 1965 to 1987. Her stage work extended well beyond Broadway, encompassing off-Broadway productions, cabaret performance, and decades of teaching at prominent theatrical institutions.

Parrish maintained a long association with the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and held teaching positions at the Circle in the Square, the High School of Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Opera Studio, Yale Drama School, where she served as Associate Professor Adjunct, the American Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Eugene O'Neill International Theatre Institute. She was also a founding member of the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company, where her performance credits included Uncle Vanya, Hot L Baltimore, and Macbeth.

Her Broadway credits included Pickwick, in which she played Mrs. Leo Hunter and understudied the role of Rachel in 1965, as well as Happy Birthday, Mr. Abbott! and Mr. Pickwick. She joined the cast of Deathtrap as Helga ten Dorp, succeeding Marian Winters, and remained with the production from 1978 through 1982. From 1983 through 1987, she appeared in La Cage aux Folles as Jacqueline. Her off-Broadway work included Keep It in the Family, where she served as standby for the roles of Betsy Jane and Daisy Brady, Riverwind as Louise Sumner in 1962, Little Mary Sunshine as Mme. Ernestine von Liebedich in 1959, and Johnny Johnson as a French Nurse in 1956.

Parrish also worked in film and television. Her feature film appearances included a role as a Group Therapy Patient in See You in the Morning (1989) and as a Rich Woman in Orphans (1987). On television, she portrayed Judge Sally Norton on Law & Order in 1994, Evelyn on Kate & Allie in 1989, and appeared on the soap opera The Edge of Night as Zelda Moffett in 1981 and as Buffy Revere in 1982.

Her performance work continued well into later life. In 2004, she appeared in a one-woman New York musical revue titled Moments of Being, with Betsy. In 2013, at the age of 88, she collaborated with Canadian dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis on Bulletins from Immortality, a piece based on the poems of Emily Dickinson directed by Paola Styron, which the two performed nationally and internationally. In 2019 and 2020, Parrish performed her cabaret show Every Soul's a Cabaret at venues including the Martha's Vineyard Playhouse in Massachusetts and Pangea in New York City, with collaborator and musical director Mark Fifer.