Elaine Stritch, Tart-Tongued Broadway Actress and Singer, Is Dead at 89
Source: NY Times
Elaine Stritch, the brassy, tart-tongued Broadway actress and singer who became a living emblem of show business durability and perhaps the leading interpreter of Stephen Sondheim’s wryly acrid musings on aging, died on Thursday at her home in Birmingham, Mich. She was 89.
Her death was confirmed by a friend, Julie Keyes. Before Ms. Stritch moved to Birmingham last year, she lived, famously, for many years at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.
Ms. Stritch’s career began in the 1940s and included her fair share of appearances in movies, including Woody Allen’s “September” (1987) and “Small Time Crooks” (2000), and on television; well into her 80s, she played a recurring role on the NBC comedy “30 Rock” as the domineering mother of the television executive played by Alec Baldwin. But the stage was her true professional home, where, whether in musicals, nonmusical dramas or solo cabaret shows, she drew audiences to her with her whiskey voice, her seen-it-all manner and the blunt charisma of a star.
Plainspoken, egalitarian, impatient with fools and foolishness, and admittedly fond of cigarettes, alcohol and late nights — she finally gave up smoking and drinking in her 60s — though she took it up again — Ms. Stritch might be the only actor to work as a bartender after starring on Broadway, and she was completely unabashed about her good-time-girl attitude. <...>
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/theater/elaine-stritch-tart-tongued-broadway-actress-and-singer-is-dead-at-89.html
RIP Ms Stritch.
One of the great Stritch moments is her (failed, gut wrenching, drunken) effort at recording The Ladies Who Lunch for the Original Cast Album of Sondheim's Company. It's on youtube in two parts:
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And I felt kinda sad. I've been thinking about it for the last couple of days now. The last little bit, over the credits, when she looked directly into the camera, talking about how she was only ever happy on stage and said a "thank you, I love you all" to the audience. Class. 
