Elaine stritch husband
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Now, Alexandra Jacobs’s engaging new biography, “Still Here,” fleshes out our picture of the raspy-voiced actress and singer, who died in 2014 at 89. Written with the cooperation of the estate, clear-eyed affection, and considerable stylistic flair, “Still Here,” offers an intimate, somewhat open-ended portrait of Stritch that leaves intact, perhaps inevitably, the mysteries of her personality, her sexuality, and her relationship to alcohol.
Born in Detroit to a prosperous family, Stritch was, as the subtitle promises, a singular character who “defied stereotypes of gender and age, projecting both feminine and masculine and refusing the slow fade accorded most in her profession.” “Still Here,” whose title refers to a song from Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” that became a Stritch anthem, benefits from Jacobs’s access to Stritch’s family, close friends, ex-boyfriends and past collaborators. They describe a complex and colorful woman whose great successes were intertwined with a series of disappointments.
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Elaine Stritch papers
1925-2012 [bulk 1943-2011] DMarion Elaine Stritch (1925-2014) was born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Birmingham, Michigan, where she attended Convent of the Sacred Heart School, and developed an interest in acting at a young age. Stritch moved to New York City in 1944 to pursue a career in show business. She enrolled in a drama program at The New School, where she studied with Erwin Piscator.
Stritch made her Broadway debut in the Jed Harris comedy, Loco, in 1946, followed by the musical revue, Angels in the Wings, in 1947. After appearing in the comedy, Yes M'Lord (1949), she was cast as Ethel Merman's understudy in 1950's Call Me Madam, playing the lead in the subsequent touring production. This was followed by a revival of Pal Joey (1952), On Your Toes (1954), and the 1955 drama, Bus Stop (1955), which earned Stritch a Tony nomination.
In 1958, Stritch landed her first starring role on Broadway with the musical comedy, Goldilocks. She was cast as the lead again in Sail Away (1961), a performance that garnered Stritch her second Tony nomi
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The plan was to meet at the Chelsea Hotel. Elaine Stritch lived in the hotel for a brief time while rehearsing for her role in Stephen Sondheim’s 1970s musical Company, a part written for her and that has been closely associated with her ever since. It’s just about equidistant between my office and that of Alexandra Jacobs,New York Times features editor and author of Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch. But our timing was way off. The hotel is currently boarded up and construction underway; it’s in the middle of a remodel, going from an icon that housed icons to whatever it will be under new management. So we went elsewhere.
If we were meeting four or so years ago, when Jacobs was in the throes of Stritch research, "I probably would have been like, ‘Let’s go to Jake’s Saloon,’" a bar down the street that tries to look like an old Irish pub. Toasting to Stritch at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday is what Stritch would have done, and while deep in research—reading Stritch’s never-before-seen memoir, her letters, and speaking with the late performer
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