Dorothy Loudon

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Dorothy Loudon (September 17, 1933 – November 15, 2003) was a Tony Award-winning Broadway actress noted for her comedy and belting singing voice, which she used to deliver a wide range of musical comedy and Roaring Twenties songs.

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[edit] Early life and career

She was born in Boston, and grew up in Rochester, New York and began singing as a child. She moved to New York and landed a job as a featured nightclub performer. She became a lounge singer, mingling song with ad-libbed comedy, and was featured on television on The Perry Como Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.

She made her stage debut in 1962 in The World of Jules Feiffer, a Jules Feiffer play directed by Mike Nichols, with music by Stephen Sondheim. She made her Broadway debut in Nowhere to Go But Up which ran only two weeks but earned her outstanding reviews. She appeared in a series of commercial failures; The Fig Leaves Are Falling ran for four performances, though it garnered her favorable reviews and a nomination for a Tony Award in 1969; she also appeared in the disastrous 1971 musical Lolita, My Love, which closed en route to Broadway. She looked back on these with typical humor, once answering the comment "Miss Loudon, I saw you in Comedy Tonight with the response, "Oh, you poor thing! I feel so bad for you!"[citation needed]

[edit] Broadway fame

Her best-remembered role is as evil orphanage administrator Miss Hannigan in Annie, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in 1977. In the show she introduced the seminal showtunes "Little Girls" and "Easy Street".

Not long after her own husband died, she played a recently widowed woman in Ballroom in 1979. Her performance of the song "Fifty Percent" from Ballroom during that year's Tony Awards ceremony was one of a series of triumphant performances on the yearly awards show, which included an outrageous version of "Broadway Baby" from Follies. Her version of George Gershwin's "Vodka", sung as a Russian character, had her throw off a luxurious fur, (telling it to "wait in the car") to reveal a spectacular sleek blue sequined costume. When she felt the song was going a little long she ad-libbed, "I am too good for this room. I am too good for this song!"

She took over as Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd from Angela Lansbury (she was reviewed as being stellar enough to have originated the role), and co-starred with Katharine Hepburn and Julia Barr in the Broadway play West Side Waltz in 1981. In 1982 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre. She had another hit with the Jerry Herman revue, Jerry's Girls.

Her (non-musical) performance as a washed-up television comedienne in 1983's Noises Off received rave reviews, but the role was played in the movie by Carol Burnett. (Burnett also got Loudon's role in the 1982 film version of Annie).

[edit] Television and Film

Loudon starred in her own television series, Dorothy, in 1979. She portrayed a former showgirl teaching music and drama at a stuffy girls' school. It only lasted one season. She appeared in two films, playing an agent in the film Garbo Talks (with Anne Bancroft) and a Southern eccentric in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

[edit] Personal Life

She married Norman Paris, a composer who arranged the music for Sondheim's television musical Evening Primrose, and who wrote the theme song for the television game show I've Got a Secret. They remained married until his death in 1977. She died in New York City of cancer at the age of 70, and was interred in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York. She left no survivors.

[edit] Broadway Shows

Awards
Preceded by
Donna McKechnie
in A Chorus Line		 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1977
for Annie		 Succeeded by
Liza Minnelli
in The Act
Preceded by
Vivian Reed
for Bubbling Brown Sugar		 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical
1976-1977
for Annie		 Succeeded by
Bobo Lewis
for Working (musical)

[edit] Television

[edit] Film

[edit] Sources

Languages