Madeline Kahn

**Madeline Gail Kahn** (nee Wolfson; born September 29, 1942) was an American actress, comedian and singer.

## Early Life

Kahn was born in Boston, the daughter of Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer, and his wife Freda (née Goldberg). She was raised in a non-observant Jewish family. Her parents divorced when Kahn was two, and she moved with her mother to New York City. In 1953, Freda married Hiller Kahn, who later adopted Madeline; Freda eventually changed her own name to Paula Kahn. Madeline Kahn had two half-siblings: Jeffrey (from her mother's marriage to Kahn) and Robyn (from her father's second marriage).

In 1948, Kahn was sent to the progressive Manumit School, a boarding school in Bristol, Pennsylvania. During that time, her mother pursued her acting dream. Kahn soon began acting herself, and performed in a number of school productions. In 1960, she graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, New York, and then earned a drama scholarship to Hofstra University on Long Island. At Hofstra, she studied drama, music, and speech therapy. Kahn graduated from Hofstra in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy. She was a member of a local sorority on campus, Delta Chi Delta. She later studied singing in New York City with Beverley Peck Johnson.

## Career

To earn money while a college student, Kahn was a singing waitress at a Bavarian restaurant named Bavarian Manor, a Hofbräuhaus in New York's Hudson Valley. She sang musical comedy numbers during shows.

### 1960s

Kahn began auditioning for professional acting roles shortly after her graduation from Hofstra; on the side, she briefly taught public school. Just before adopting the professional name Madeline Kahn (Kahn was her stepfather's surname), she made her stage debut as a chorus girl in a revival of Kiss Me, Kate, which led her to join Actors' Equity. Her part in the flop How Now, Dow Jones was written out before the 1967 show reached Broadway.

In 1968, Kahn performed her first professional lead in a special concert performance of the operetta Candide in honour of Leonard Bernstein's 50th birthday. She made her Broadway debut in 1968 with Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968 and also appeared Off-Broadway in the musical Promenade.

### 1970s and 1980s

Kahn appeared in two Broadway musicals in the 1970s: a featured role in Richard Rodgers' 1970 Noah's Ark-themed show Two by Two (singing a high C) and a leading lady turn as Lily Garland in 1978's On the Twentieth Century. She left (or, reportedly, was fired from) the latter show early in its run, yielding the role to understudy Judy Kaye. She starred in a 1977 Town Hall semi-staged concert version of She Loves Me (opposite Barry Bostwick and original London cast member Rita Moreno).

Kahn's film debut was in the 1968 short De Düva (The Dove). Her feature debut was as Ryan O'Neal's character's hysterical fiancée in Peter Bogdanovich's screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972) starring Barbra Streisand. Her film career continued with Paper Moon (1973), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Kahn was cast in the role of Agnes Gooch in the 1974 film Mame, but star Lucille Ball fired Kahn due to artistic differences. (Several of Ball's biographies say Kahn was eager to be released from the role so that she could join the cast of Blazing Saddles, a film about to go into production; however, Kahn stated in a 1996 interview with Charlie Rose that she was fired.)

A close succession of comedies — Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), and High Anxiety (1977) — were all directed by Mel Brooks, who was able to bring out the best of Kahn's comic talents. Their last collaboration was 1981's History of the World, Part I. For Blazing Saddles, she was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the April 2006 issue of Premiere magazine, her performance in Blazing Saddles as Lili von Shtupp was selected as number 74 on its list of the 100 greatest performances of all time.

In 1975, Kahn again teamed with Bogdanovich to co-star with Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd in the musical At Long Last Love. The film was a critical and financial disaster, but Kahn largely escaped blame for the failure. In that same year, she again teamed with Gene Wilder, this time for his comedy The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. In 1978, Kahn's comic screen persona reached another peak with her portrayal of Mrs. Montenegro in Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective (1978), a spoof of both Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, directed by Robert Moore. That role was followed by a cameo in 1979's The Muppet Movie.

Kahn's roles were primarily comedic rather than dramatic, although the 1970s found her originating roles in two plays that had elements of both: 1973's In the Boom Boom Room on Broadway and 1977's Marco Polo Sings a Solo Off-Broadway.

After her success in Brooks' films, Kahn appeared in a number of films in the 1980s. She played Mrs. White in 1985's Clue, First Lady Constance Link in the 1980 spoof First Family, a twin from outer space in the Jerry Lewis sci-fi comedy Slapstick of Another Kind (1982), the love interest of Burt Reynolds in the crime comedy City Heat (1984), and Draggle in the animated film My Little Pony: The Movie (1986). She voiced the character Gussie Mausheimer in the animated film An American Tail. According to animator Don Bluth, she was cast because he was "hoping she would use a voice similar to the one she used as a character in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles."

In 1983, Kahn starred in her own short-lived TV sitcom Oh Madeline, which ended after one season due to poor ratings. In 1986, she starred in ABC Comedy Factory's pilot of Chameleon, which never aired on the fall schedule. In 1987, Kahn won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance in the ABC Afterschool Special Wanted: The Perfect Guy.

Kahn returned to the stage as Billie Dawn in the 1989 Broadway revival of Born Yesterday, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

### 1990s

Kahn played the mother of Molly Ringwald's character in the 1990 film Betsy's Wedding, and shortly after she recorded a voice for the unreleased animated movie The Magic 7. In 1994, she portrayed suicide hotline worker Blanche Munchnik in the holiday farce Mixed Nuts. Kahn played the corrupt mayor in a benefit concert performance of Anyone Can Whistle in 1995. She appeared in Nixon as Martha Beall Mitchell (1995).

On stage, Kahn played Dr. Gorgeous in Wendy Wasserstein's 1993 play (on Broadway) The Sisters Rosensweig, a role for which she earned a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.  She was a member of the cast of Cosby (1996–1999) as Pauline, the eccentric friend and neighbour.

Kahn participated in a workshop reading of Dear World at the Roundabout Theatre Company in June 1998, reading the part of Gabrielle. She also voiced Gypsy the moth in A Bug's Life (1998).

Kahn received good reviews for her Chekhovian turn in the 1999 independent movie Judy Berlin, her final film. Before her passing, she also worked on the first two episodes of Little Bill, voicing Mrs. Shapiro. The second episode ("Just a Baby" / "The Camp Out"), the final instalment for which she voiced Mrs. Shapiro, was dedicated to her memory. Kathy Najimy succeeded her in the role of Mrs. Shapiro following Kahn's death.

## Personal Life

### Death

Kahn was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1998. She underwent treatment, continued to work on Cosby, and married John Hansbury in Summer 1999. However, the disease spread rapidly, and she died on December 3, 1999, at age 57.

She was cremated on December 6, at Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey. A bench dedicated to her memory was erected in Central Park by her husband John and her brother Jeffrey. The bench is located near the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir on West 87th Street.

## Awards and Nominations

See Also: Madeline Kahn Awards and Nominations