Tally Brown

Tally Brown (August 1, 1924 – May 6, 1989) was an American actress and singer born and raised in New York City. Her career spanned Broadway, film, nightclub performance, and the New York underground arts scene, with credits extending from the mid-1950s through the 1980s.

Brown began her formal musical education at Juilliard at age sixteen, receiving classical training before her artistic direction shifted. A meeting with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood in 1947 led her toward jazz and blues, and by the 1950s she had developed a rhythm-and-blues style that drew comparisons to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. During that period she recorded the album A Torch for Tally with the Jimmy Diamond Quartet, which included the songs Limehouse Blues, Honeysuckle Rose, and My Man. She was also an early supporter of Ruth W. Greenfield, who founded the Fine Arts Conservatory in Miami in 1951, an institution The New York Times described as one of the first racially integrated theaters and art schools in the South.

Her Broadway career ran from 1954 to 1973 and included productions of The Pajama Game, Mame, and Medea. She also appeared in the California tour of Mame and in the Broadway production of Medea, which starred Irene Papas, as well as in off-Broadway work. In the 1960s and 1970s, Brown performed at prominent New York City nightclubs including Reno Sweeney's and S.N.A.F.U., and she provided entertainment at the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in New York City. Following her death, The New York Times noted that she was known for intense, dramatic renditions of songs by Kurt Weill, the Rolling Stones, and David Bowie.

Brown's film career began with two Andy Warhol-directed productions: Batman Dracula in 1964 and Camp in 1965, the latter of which included a scene in which she mimicked Yma Sumac. She first encountered Warhol in the summer of 1964 at a benefit for the Living Theatre. Brown subsequently became a recognized figure in Warhol's Factory circle and appeared in at least two of his films. She also appeared in the experimental films The Illiac Passion, in which she played Venus under the direction of Gregory Markopoulos, and Brand X in 1970, in which she played a talk show hostess. Her film work extended to the horror film Silent Night, Bloody Night in 1972, where she appeared alongside numerous Factory-associated figures including Mary Woronov, Ondine, Candy Darling, Jack Smith, and Susan Rothenberg. Additional screen credits include The Owl and the Pussycat in 1970, Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers in 1972, Night of the Juggler in 1980, and several television productions. In 1970, Brown was among the panelists on the David Susskind Show who discussed Warhol's underground film Trash, joined by other members of the Factory.

German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim directed a documentary portrait of Brown titled Tally Brown, New York, released in West Germany in 1979. The film drew on extensive interviews with Brown, in which she discussed her collaborations with Warhol, Taylor Mead, and others. It featured cameo appearances by Divine, Holly Woodlawn, and artist Ching Ho Cheng, and employed cinéma vérité techniques, opening with footage of street life in and around Times Square. At the time of filming, Brown was a resident of Washington Heights, Manhattan. The documentary received the Film Award in Silver at the German Film Awards in the category of Outstanding Non-Feature Film in the year of its release. Brown's biographical papers and artifacts are archived at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has also presented an exhibition dedicated to her life and work.