Rita Rudner was a Bway Dancer!

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/6/12 at 10:30pm

Watching an Showtime special with Ms Rudner and at the begining she talks her bio and mentions being a dancer -- I had no idea et all!

Here's her IBDB page.
Rita's B'way Career

[MTVMANN]

Posted: 5/6/12 at 10:42pm

I knew she had played Lily in Annie...she seems quite right for that role.

[egghumor]

Posted: 5/6/12 at 11:04pm

I got to see her play Lily St. Regis. She was terrific!

[sabrelady]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 12:05am

this is the joke as she tells it in her slightly distracted version of a Marilyn voice:
I usta be a dancer- but I had to stop.
I pulled a groin muscle,
and it wasn't mine.

I have been known to borrow from time to time but always w full credit.

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 12:11am

Here is Rita Rudner's bio in the 1980 souvenir program for ANNIE on Broadway. Sarah Jessica Parker was Annie; Gary Beach was Rooster and Alice Ghostley was Miss Hannigan. How I wish I could go back to the Alvin Theatre right now. The Alvin Theatre was my home-away-from-home. I was a regular fixture backstage during most afternoons. From the age of 12 to 15.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 12:16am

They should get Rita Rudner for Miss Hannigan in the revival.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 12:25am

Here's Rita Rudner doing "Easy Street" with Gary Beach as Rooster and Betty Hutton as Hannigan.
Easy Street

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 3:58am

I don't think Hutton understood the hotel joke. Wasn't it supposed to be you dumb ho------tel!

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 5:03am

No...Lily's alias is the name of a hotel. The St. Regis. (If I remember correctly, when she's arrested at the end, she has several aliases -- all of them hotel names.)

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 5:10am

oh yeah. I forgot the St. Regis part.....but somebody (either Carol Burnett, Kathy Bates, Alice Ghostley whom I saw as a kid) extended the word like she was going to call Lily a whore....but then changed her mind quickly

[mallardo]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 9:01am

She was also in Mack and Mabel as one of the Bathing Beauties. She's on the cast recording.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 9:19am

That doesnt make any sense....because she would have needed to mispronounce whore....which does not start with the same sound at hotel. It's relatively recent that "ho" (sounding the same) stood for whore. Certainly not at the time of the depression.

[BrodyFosse123]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 10:09am

Exactly. The ghetto-ish "ho" referencing for whore didn't begin until the 1990s. It wasn't even on the lexicon of slang in the 70s or even the 80s let alone the 1930s.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 8:25pm

I guess I saw it in an amateur production I saw.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 8:39pm

How was Alice Ghostley as Hannigan?

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 8:52pm

"How was Alice Ghostley as Hannigan?"

I was a kid but I remember really liking her. It was a big deal to see her since she was the first person from TV I ever saw live. She was quite funny and I remember how she said the final line to Annie of "I never liked you anyway" in that kind of Paul Lynde-esque style of hers. I think she was considered a very strong replacement for Dorothy Loudon.

Updated On: 5/7/12 at 08:52 PM

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 5/7/12 at 9:39pm

I guess I saw it in an amateur production I saw.

Leadingplayer, was it in San Diego? I saw a production that made that joke too and I thought it was extremely inappropriate.