...alice ghostley - a ghostley lady...

With a name like that, one would associate it with horror movies, but never with heavy dramas. Comedianne Alice Ghostley (14th August 1926 - 21st September 2007), with her eternally forlorn looks, who portrayed a withering wallflower, a klutzy helper, a dowdy and drab housewife or a cynical tale monger, she had the ability to draw laughters from the skimpiest of material with a simple whine and fret.

She was born in the tiny town of Eve, Missouri in a whistle-stop railway station, where her father was a telegraph operator. Alice grew up in various towns in the Midwest (Arkansas, Oklahoma) and at the age of five, began performing - reciting poetry, tap dance and sing. Spurred on by a high school teacher, she studied drama at the University of Oklahoma but eventually left in order to pursue a career in New York with her sister Gladys, teaming together in an act called "The Ghostley Sisters". Alice eventually developed her own cabaret show as a singer and comedienne, she toiled as a secretary to a music teacher in exchange for singing lessons, worked as a theater usherette in order to see free stage shows, paid her dues as a waitress, worked once for a detective agency, and even had a stint as a patch tester for a detergent company. No glamourpuss by any stretch of the imagination, she built her reputation as a singing funny lady.

The short-statured, auburn-haired entertainer received her star-making break singing the satirical ditty "The Boston Beguine" in the Broadway stage revue "New Faces of 1952", which also showcased up-and-coming stars like Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence and Paul Lynde to whom she would be invariably compared to what with their similar comic approach, fretful demeanors and dry sarcasm. The film version of New Faces (1954) also featured most of the same cast. She and "male counterpart" Lynde would appear together in the same films and/or TV shows over the years.

Making a name for herself on the Tony-winning Broadway stage, her eternally forlorn looks later became an amusingly familiar plain-Jane presence on TV sitcoms and in an occasional film or two during the 50s, 60s and 70s. After a successful run on the stage, she dwelved in TV. In the 1957 television musical version of "Cinderella", starring Julie Andrews, Alice and her good friend Kaye Ballard, as the not-nice stepsisters, stole much of the proceedings and although it was mighty hard to take away her comedy instincts, she did appear in a TV production of "Twelfth Night" as Maria opposite Maurice Evans' Malvolio, and graced such dramatic programs as "Perry Mason" and "Naked City", as well as a very short appearance in the Gregory Peck(Best Actor) film "To Kill A Mockingbird" (1962). She kept herself in the television limelight as a frequent panelist in game shows.

She was given featured caricature roles in some lightweight comedies such as "My Six Loves" (1963) starring Debbie Reynolds and "With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) starring Doris Day. She also had a small teacher role in the popular 1978 film version of "Grease". Alice primarily situated herself, however, on the sitcom circuit and appeared in a number of recurring 'nervous Nellie" roles, topping it off as the painfully shy, dematerializing and accident-prone witch nanny Esmeralda in "Bewitched" from 1969-1972 and as the batty friend Bernice in"Designing Women" (1986). 1978 Alice replaced Dorothy Loudon as cruel Miss Hannigan in "Annie", her last Broadway stand. A series of multiple strokes ended her career come the millennium and she passed away of colon cancer on September 21, 2007. Her long-time husband of fifty years, Italian comedic actor Felice Orlandi, whom she married since 1953, died in 2003. The couple had no children.

Goodbye Miss Ghostley...

(Scanned autographed photo - property of author)