Elaine Stritch (February 2, 1925 – July 17, 2014)
Stritch was an actress and singer, best known for her work on Broadway. She
appeared in numerous stage plays and musicals, feature films, and many TV
programs. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995.
Stritch died early this morning at her home in Birmingham, Michigan following
a period of poor health.
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968)
Helen Keller is a famous deaf and blind woman who became a women’s
suffragist and political activist while publishing twelve books. Her life and
childhood education with radical teacher, Anne Sullivan, were immortalized
in The Miracle Worker, a Broadway play (and later, Oscar-winning film)
based on Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life.
President John F. Kennedy (left) meets with Helen Keller, seated far
right
Catherine Rosalind Russell (June 4, 1907 – November 28, 1976)
Russell was an actress of stage and screen, known for playing character
roles such as a newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks 1940 comedy
His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the 1958 film Auntie
Mame. She won all five Golden Globes for which she was nominated. She
was one of the few actresses of her time who regularly played professional
women, such as judges, reporters, and psychiatrists. Her career span was
from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Tallulah as Gladys Sinclair
At 15, Tallulah Bankhead won a movie-magazine beauty contest and
persuaded her family to let her move to New York. Her father, William
Bankhead, used his influence and connections to help secure Tallulah’s
first stage role, a nonspeaking, one scene walk-on part in the comedy
The Squab Farm. It only played the Bijou theater for three weeks.
Tallulah’s comments on the play from her autobiography: "A mute
child in a flop. That was my beginning."
