Madeline Kahn

Madeline Gail Kahn, born Madeline Wolfson on September 29, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American actress, comedian, and singer whose career spanned stage, film, and television from the 1960s until her death on December 3, 1999. Her father, Bernard B. Wolfson, worked as a garment manufacturer, and her mother, Freda, later married Hiller Kahn, who adopted Madeline; the surname Kahn subsequently became her professional name. Following her parents' divorce when she was two, Kahn moved with her mother to New York City. She had two half-siblings: Jeffrey, from her mother's marriage to Hiller Kahn, and Robyn, from her father's second marriage. In 1948, she was enrolled at the Manumit School, a progressive boarding school in Bristol, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, New York, in 1960 and earned a drama scholarship to Hofstra University on Long Island, where she studied drama, music, and speech therapy and was a member of the sorority Delta Chi Delta. She graduated from Hofstra in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy and later studied singing in New York City with Beverley Peck Johnson.

While still a college student, Kahn worked as a singing waitress at Bavarian Manor, a Hofbrau restaurant in New York's Hudson Valley, where she also performed musical comedy numbers. A customer's request that she sing the aria "Un Bel Di" from Madame Butterfly prompted her to study operatic singing, which eventually led to additional vocal training. Shortly after graduating from Hofstra, she briefly taught public school while auditioning for professional roles. Her stage debut came as a chorus girl in a revival of Kiss Me, Kate, a production that led her to join Actors' Equity. A part written for her in the musical How Now, Dow Jones was cut before the show reached Broadway in 1967. In 1968, she performed her first professional lead in a special concert performance of Candide honoring Leonard Bernstein's 50th birthday at Philharmonic Hall. That same year she also appeared off-Broadway in the musical Promenade.

Kahn made her Broadway debut in 1968 with Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968, launching a stage career that continued through 1993. Her Broadway appearances included a featured role in Richard Rodgers' 1970 musical Two by Two and a lead turn as Lily Garland in the original 1978 production of On the Twentieth Century, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. She originated a role in the 1973 Broadway play In the Boom Boom Room, earning a second Tony Award nomination and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1974. In 1977, she appeared in the off-Broadway play Marco Polo Sings a Solo and starred in a semi-staged concert version of She Loves Me at Town Hall, opposite Barry Bostwick and Rita Moreno. A third Tony Award nomination came with the 1989 Broadway revival of Born Yesterday. Kahn's Broadway career culminated with The Sisters Rosensweig in 1993, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.

Kahn's film debut was in the 1968 short De Düva (The Dove). Her feature debut followed in Peter Bogdanovich's screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972), in which she played Ryan O'Neal's hysterical fiancée opposite Barbra Streisand. Bogdanovich's Paper Moon (1973) brought her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of carnival-style dancer Trixie Delight. She was cast as Agnes Gooch in the 1974 film Mame but departed the production before completing it; she subsequently joined the cast of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974), in which her performance as jaded cabaret singer Lili von Shtupp earned her a second Academy Award nomination and was later ranked number 74 on Premiere magazine's 2006 list of the 100 greatest performances of all time. Brooks directed Kahn in three additional films: Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1977), and History of the World, Part I (1981). She reteamed with Bogdanovich for the 1975 musical At Long Last Love, co-starring Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd. That same year she appeared alongside Gene Wilder in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. Her other film credits included The Cheap Detective (1978), a cameo in The Muppet Movie (1979), First Family (1980), Slapstick of Another Kind (1982), Yellowbeard (1983), City Heat (1984), Clue (1985), in which she played Mrs. White, My Little Pony: The Movie (1986), the animated An American Tail, in which she voiced Gussie Mausheimer, and Nixon (1995). Kahn worked alongside character actress Eileen Brennan in three films: At Long Last Love, The Cheap Detective, and Clue.

On television, Kahn starred as Madeline Wayne in the sitcom Oh Madeline, which ran from 1983 to 1984, and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1987 for an ABC Afterschool Special.