Broadway legend Elaine Stritch has died, aged 89

Broadway legend Elaine Stritch has died at the age of 89.

After making her stage debut in 1944, the actress trod the boards for over six decades, notching up four Tony nominations for her performances in plays and musicals including Noel Coward’s Sail Away and Stephen Sondheim’s Company.

In 2002, she finally won a Tony, picking up the ‘Best Special Theatrical Event’ prize for her one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty.

During the 1970s, she took on several roles in London’s West End, and also starred opposite Donald Sinden in ITV’s hit culture clash sitcom Two’s Company, which ran for four series between 1975 and 1979. She also brought her one-woman show on a UK tour in 2002.

In more recent years, she was seen as Colleen, the domineering mother of Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy, in Tina Fey’s US sitcom 30 Rock, a role which won Stritch the third of her three Emmys. She also played Jane Fonda’s mother-in-law in the hit 2005 comedy film Monster-in-Law.

Her final Broadway performance came in 2010, when she replaced Angela Lansbury as Madame Armfeldt in a revival of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.

Stritch, who was candid about her battles with alcoholism, was married to John Bay, a fellow actor, from 1973 until his death in 1982. Last year she announced she was relocating from New York to Birmingham, Michigan – where she passed away yesterday (July 17) following a period of ill health.

Discussing her status as a gay icon, Stritch said with typical sass in an interview with Pride Source earlier this year: “I’m just becoming aware of it. And it isn’t that I finally discovered that gay people understand me and straight people don’t – oh, no no no. Not a word of truth in that. I can’t tell you how many straight people I know that think I am the cat’s pajamas.”