Lillian Roth

Lillian Roth (December 13, 1910 – May 12, 1980) was an American singer and actress born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Katie (née Silverman) and Arthur Rutstein. At six years old, she was brought by her mother to Educational Pictures, where she became the company's trademark, depicted as a living statue holding a lamp of knowledge. She attended the Professional Children's School in New York City alongside classmates Ruby Keeler and Milton Berle, and during her early years she and her sister Ann toured together under the billing Lillian Roth and Co., sometimes advertised as the Roth Kids.

Roth made her Broadway debut in 1917 as Flossie in The Inner Man, and the following year she appeared as an extra in the government documentary Pershing's Crusaders. In the early 1920s she enrolled at the Clark School of Concentration and appeared in Artists and Models in 1923 and in Revels with Frank Fay, lying to producers about her age to secure the role. By 1927 she had returned to Broadway for the first of several Earl Carroll Vanities engagements, which was followed by the Florenz Ziegfeld production Midnight Frolics. She also appeared in Padlocks of 1927 during this period.

Roth signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures, appearing in The Love Parade (1929) with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, The Vagabond King (1930), Paramount on Parade (1930), Honey (1930), in which she introduced "Sing You Sinners," Cecil B. DeMille's Madam Satan (1930) with Reginald Denny and Kay Johnson, Sea Legs with Jack Oakie, and the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers (1930). She also took Ethel Merman's stage role in the film version of Take a Chance, singing "Eadie Was a Lady." After departing Paramount, she was cast by Warner Bros. in a supporting role in the 1933 women's prison film Ladies They Talk About, starring Barbara Stanwyck. She headlined the Palace Theatre in New York and performed in the Earl Carroll Vanities in 1928, 1931, and 1932.

By the late 1930s Roth had largely stepped away from public life, a period shaped in part by her struggle with alcoholism. In February 1953, she appeared on the television series This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards, and spoke openly about her alcoholism, subsequently receiving more than 40,000 letters from viewers. The following year she published her autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow, written with collaborator Gerold Frank, which sold more than seven million copies in 20 languages. A film adaptation released in 1955 starred Susan Hayward, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of Roth. The book's success prompted Roth to record four songs for the Coral label, followed by an LP for Epic and another for Tops, and she headlined a vaudeville revival at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. In 1958 she published a second book, Beyond My Worth, and performed at venues including Las Vegas and New York's Copacabana, as well as in Australia.

Roth's Broadway career extended well beyond her early work. In 1962 she appeared in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale, playing Elliott Gould's mother. The production, which also featured Barbra Streisand in her Broadway debut, ran for 301 performances, and producer David Merrick elevated Roth to top star billing after opening night, with Gould, Streisand, and Sheree North listed below her. Roth remained with the show for its entire run and recorded the cast album for Columbia Records. In 1965 she received top billing again as Rose Brice, mother of Fanny Brice, in the national touring company of Funny Girl, with Marilyn Michaels in the title role. Her final Broadway appearance came in 1971 in the Kander and Ebb musical 70, Girls, 70, bringing her Broadway career to a span of 1917 to 1971.

In addition to her stage work, Roth appeared in the 1976 cult horror film Alice, Sweet Alice, playing a pathologist, and her final film was Boardwalk (1979), alongside Lee Strasberg, Ruth Gordon, and Janet Leigh. One of her last public appearances was a club act at the New York nightclub Reno Sweeney, and a concert recording from The Town Hall was released posthumously by AEI Records. Roth was married six times, to William C. Scott, Judge Benjamin Shalleck, Mark Harris, Eugene J. Weiner, Edward Goldman, and Thomas Burt McGuire. She died on May 12, 1980, at De Witt Nursing Home in Manhattan, following a stroke, at the age of 69.