--- title: Elaine Stritch Remembrance: Richard Zoglin Looks Back description: The iconic Broadway star was always a commanding presence on stage canonical: https://time.com/3003023/elaine-stritch-remembrance-obit/ author: Richard Zoglin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-17T22:33:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:08:05.347Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Elaine Stritch Remembrance: Richard Zoglin Looks Back og:description: The iconic Broadway star was always a commanding presence on stage og:url: https://time.com/3003023/elaine-stritch-remembrance-obit/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfed8ceb98c8727aa/69869c25e8524b7b0b603edd/elaine_stritch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2693 og:image:height: 1515 og:image:alt: Elaine Stritch attends the "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me" New York Screening at Paley Center For Media on February 19, 2014 in New York City. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Elaine Stritch Remembrance: Richard Zoglin Looks Back twitter:description: The iconic Broadway star was always a commanding presence on stage twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfed8ceb98c8727aa/69869c25e8524b7b0b603edd/elaine_stritch.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Elaine Stritch: How to Be a Broadway Diva > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Zoglin](https://time.com/author/richard-zoglin/) ## Richard Zoglin Jul 17, 2014 10:33 PM UTC  Elaine Stritch attends the "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me" New York Screening at Paley Center For Media on February 19, 2014 in New York City. Elaine Stritch attends the "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me" New York Screening at Paley Center For Media on February 19, 2014 in New York City. Walter McBride—WireImage/Getty Images by [Richard Zoglin](https://time.com/author/richard-zoglin/) ## Richard Zoglin Jul 17, 2014 10:33 PM UTC When she left New York for good in early 2013 — retiring from show business and moving back to her home state of Michigan — it was as if some fundamental life force had suddenly disappeared from Broadway, like the demolition of a storied old theater or the closing of _Mamma Mia._ Elaine Stritch didn’t deny, in the few interviews she gave after she left, that she missed the city that she loved and came to embody. (“I’m about as unhappy as anybody can be” she told an interviewer last June.) And when she died on Thursday, at 89, it was perhaps a confirmation of what every New York theater lover already knew: neither Broadway nor Elaine Stritch could live without each other. She was brassy (her name could almost define the word in Webster’s) and boozy, a salty broad with a gravely, gin-soaked voice bursting forth from an improbably pixie-like figure. Even in her late 70s, when she starred on Broadway in a one-woman show, _Elaine Stritch at Liberty,_ she could show off her still lean and lithe gams in sheer black tights, and make you think that Broadway performers really are immortal. For many, she was. “She was an indomitable spirit,” said Christine Ebersole, the two-time Tony Award winner who became close friends with Stritch in her later years. “I always felt really close to her — kindred spirits in a way. I admired her tenacity. She was a staunch character.” Stritch was born in Detroit and began her Broadway career in the late 1940s. She understudied for Ethel Merman in _Call Me Madam;_ sang one of Rodgers and Hart’s most scintillating comic numbers, “Zip,” in _Pal Joey;_ starred in Noel Coward’s 1961 musical _Sail Away;_ and replaced Uta Hagen as Martha in the original Broadway production of _Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?_ (a show, she later claimed, in which she experienced her first orgasm onstage). But her career-defining turn came in Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical _Company,_ in which she played a hard-drinking society dame and delivered her signature number, “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Stritch’s raspy voice and boozy defiance — “another vodka stinger!” — was the perfect match for Sondheim’s urbane cynicism, and she became one of his greatest muses and interpreters. A few years later she appropriated another Sondheim number as her own, his rousing anthem to show-business survival, “I’m Still Here.” The song symbolized her own career, which seemed to keep hitting new heights as she aged. Woody Allen gave her juicy characters to play in his movies _September_ and _Small Time Crooks_. On TV, she co-starred in the British comedy series _Two’s Company_ and had frequent guest-starring roles in American sitcoms, most recently as Alec Baldwin’s hard-bitten mother in _30 Rock_. She got a Tony nomination (one of five) for her co-starring role in the acclaimed 1996 Broadway revival of Edward Albee’s _A Delicate Balance._ She was 77 when she had her greatest role on Broadway — as herself in _Elaine Stritch at Liberty_, for which she won a Tony. She commanded the stage, delivering her signature numbers in between stories about her show-business career and her checkered personal life, from her romantic flings with stars like Marlon Brando and Rock Hudson to her blown audition for the starring role in the TV sitcom _Golden Girls._ Backstage, too, she was reputedly a tough broad — always a big drinker, sometimes temperamental and insecure. Even at her last New York cabaret appearance — a farewell show at the Cafe Carlyle in April of last year — she berated the audience for interrupting her and laughing in the wrong places. But she was a Broadway diva who earned the right. She never gave less than her all, and the audience never gave her less than its unconditional love. ### Elaine Stritch, Great Dame of Broadway  Actress Elaine Stritch c. 1956 NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images  Ed Sullivan talks with Elaine Stritch on TOAST OF THE TOWN on November 14, 1954. CBS/Getty Images  Elaine Stritch, Ray Bolger NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images  THE PERFECT FURLOUGH, Troy Donahue, Les Tremayne, Linda Cristal, Keenan Wynn, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Elaine Stritch, King Donovan in 1958. Everett Collection  Grover Dale and Elaine Stritch of the cast of Sail Away on November 27, 1961. Bettmann/Corbis  Elaine Stritch on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. NBC/Getty Images  Elaine Stritch talks to patrons while serving drinks at Elaine's (no relation) where she works as a barmaid on August 12, 1964\. Miss Stritch chose to spend the summer working in a bar even though she could have had her pick of summer theater tours. Bettmann/Corbis  Elaine Stritch poses for a portrait at the Tunnel night club in the mid 1990s in New York City. Catherine McGann—Getty Images  Elaine Stritch performs at the Kennedy Center Honors on October 29, 1994. CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images  Elaine Stritch with her Emmy for "Outstanding individual performance in a variety or music program," for "Elaine Stritch: At Liberty," in the press room at the 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on September 19, 2004. Lucy Nicholson—Reuters/Corbis  Elaine Stritch performing in the New York Philharmonic Gala Evening at Avery Fisher Hall New York City on March 15, 2010. Walter McBride—Retna Ltd./Corbis  Bradley Dean, Katherine McNamara, Alexander Hanson, Bernadette Peters, Elaine Stritch, Kevin David Thomas, Karen Murphy, and Hunter Ryan Herdlicka in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Tony Award-winning masterpiece A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, directed by Tony Award-winner Trevor Nunn. Walter Kerr Theatre in New York City on July 13, 2010. Walter McBride—Retna Ltd./Corbis  Elaine Stritch performs during a White House music series concert saluting Broadway in the East Room at the White House in Washington on July 19, 2010. Kevin Dietsch—UPI/Corbis  George Grizzard as George Albright, Elaine Stritch as Martha Albright, Jane Curtin as Dr. Mary Albright and John Lithgow as Dr. Dick Solomon in 3rd Rock From The Sun. NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images  Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy and Elaine Stritch as Colleen Donaghy in 30 Rock. NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images  Elaine Stritch performing 'Movin' Over And Out' her final engagement ever at the Cafe Carlyle in New York City on April 2, 2013. 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