Kahn, Madeline (1942–1999)

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Kahn, Madeline (1942–1999)

American actress and comedian, best known for her ditzy characters in the films of Mel Brooks. Born Madeline Gail Kahn on September 29, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts; died of ovarian cancer on December 3, 1999, in New York, New York; daughter of Bernard B. Wolfson (a dress manufacturer) and Paula (Wolfson) Kahn; graduated from Martin Van Buren High School, Queens; Hofstra University, Hempstead, Long Island, B.A., 1964; married John Hansbury (an attorney), on October 6, 1999.

Selected theater:

Made Broadway debut in New Faces of 1968 ; appeared as Goldie in Two by Two (1970), Chrissy in Boom Boom Room (1973), the shopgirl in She Loves Me (1977); appeared in On the Twentieth Century (1978), as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1988), as Gorgeous Teitelbaum in The Sisters Rosensweig (1992).

Selected filmography:

What's Up Doc? (1972); Paper Moon (1973); From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973); Blazing Saddles (1974); Young Frankenstein (1974); At Long Last Love (1975); The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother (1975); Won Ton Ton—The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976); High Anxiety (1977); The Cheap Detective (1978); (cameo) The Muppet Movie (1979); Simon (1980); Happy Birthday, Gemini (1980); Wholly Moses! (1980); First Family (1980); History of the World: Part I (1981); Yellowbeard (1983); Slapstick of Another Kind (1984); City Heat (1984); Clue (1985); (voice only) My Little Pony (1986); (voice only) An American Tail (1986); Betsy's Wedding (1990).

A zany presence on stage, screen, and television, Madeline Kahn reached her zenith as the tired saloon singer Lili von Shtupp in Mel Brooks' western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974), a performance that Frank Rich termed "fallingdown-on-the-floor funny." Brooks, who went on to cast Kahn in several of his subsequent movies, called the actress "one of the most talented people that ever lived." Kahn viewed acting as a compulsion. "I need to do it for some reason, and I love doing it, " she once explained in interview for the Christian Science Monitor (January 29, 1976). "I suppose it's a way of reaching out to other people. … If I didn't love to do it, I wouldn't do it. … It isn't easy, and sometimes it's scary."

Madeline Gail Kahn was born in Boston and raised in New York City, primarily by her mother, who divorced Kahn's father when Madeline was very young and then remarried when she was 11. Shy and insecure as a child, she was encouraged by her mother to "flower creatively" and was given piano, dance, and voice lessons to expedite the process. She slipped through high school unnoticed and won a scholarship to Hofstra University, where she majored in drama, then switched to music, and finally graduated as a speech therapist. Meanwhile, she kept up with her singing and following college decided to pursue an acting career. After waiting tables and making the rounds, in 1965 she snagged a role in the chorus of a City Center revival of Kiss Me Kate. She then spent two years performing opera and light opera roles with the Green Mansions repertory company in upstate New York. She got her first break with a role in New Faces of 1968, in which she delighted the critics with a Brecht-Weill parody, "Das Chicago Song." She won additional raves and her first Tony nomination for her portrayal of Chrissy, an ambitious go-go dancer, in David Rabe's Boom Boom Room (1973), performed at Lincoln Center. "She is extraordinary in the quality of her emotion, her evocation of a fighting vulnerability, her struggle to seize the sweetness of her humanity," wrote Jack Kroll in Newsweek (November 19, 1973).

The actress made her film debut in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc? (1972), stealing several scenes from superstar Barbra Streisand. "Miss Kahn, who has a voice that sounds as if it had been filtered through a ceramic nose, just about takes off with the movie," exclaimed Vincent Canby in The New York Times (March 10, 1972). Bogdanovich cast her again in Paper Moon (1973), this time as Trixie Delight, a Depression stripper who takes up with a con artist (Ryan O'Neal) and his equally crafty young daughter (Tatum O'Neal ). Kahn's performance, described by Judith Crist as "sheer delight," earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

Kahn was in peak form in Blazing Saddles. Her portrayal of Lili von Shtupp, a spoof of Marlene Dietrich 's spoof in Destry Rides Again, brought her a second Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. "Gartered, ruffled, a heaving sea of bosom and thigh, she sneers, sulks, lisps, and pouts her audience into a state of frenzied lust," wrote Robert Berkvist, describing Lili for The New York Times' readers (March 24, 1974). "Lili, Lili, Lili, they roar. Phooey, she yawns, go away. Later in her dressing room, she disarms the town's admiring sheriff by accepting the gift of a single flower with the immortal words, 'Oh, one wed wose, how wovely.'"

With Brooks directing her again, Kahn joined Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman inYoung Frankenstein (1974), a black-and-white parody of both Mary Shelley 's book and the 1931 movie based on the novel. In one of the film's more notorious scenes, Kahn, as Elizabeth, the fiancée of Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder), the grandson of the original baron, responds to a moment of sexual ecstasy with a full-throated operatic rendition of "Sweet Mystery of Life," an episode termed sexist but hilarious by William Wolf in Cue (December 23, 1974). Kahn was teamed with Wilder and Feldman again in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother (1975), which was also written by Wilder and served as his directorial debut. In the role of Jenny, a music-hall singer and a woman of mystery, the actress was once again right on the mark. "Kahn contributes another wonderful impersonation of a sex tease with a weird combination of airiness and the pouts," reported Richard Schickel in Time (December 2, 1975). "Within that wellformed woman lurks the soul of a perpetual adolescent." Kahn also worked with Mel Brooks once more in History of the World: Part I (1981), but it proved to be a less successful venture for both of them.

Kahn was on stage again in 1977, portraying an unfaithful wife in Marco Polo Sings a Solo, a comedy produced at the New York Public Theater, and—a month later—in the role of the shopgirl who finds love in the concert version of the musical She Loves Me, at Town Hall. Kahn's later stage appearances included a romp as Billie Dawn in a 1989 revival of Born Yesterday with Ed Asner, and a Tony-winning performance as the yearning sister Gorgeous in Wendy Wasserstein 's The Sisters Rosensweig (1992). That same year, Kahn made a one-time-only appearance in a Carnegie Hall tribute to Stephen Sondheim, giving a definitive performance of the fast-paced tongue-twister "Getting Married Today" from Company (1970).

Throughout her career, Madeline Kahn frequently performed on television, making the rounds of the late-night shows and appearing in three television series, "Oh Madeline" (1983–84), "Mr. President" (1989), and "Cosby" as the ditzy neighbor Pauline.

Kahn lived a quiet, unassuming life, eschewing the social scene and relishing her privacy. The actress was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1998, but did not make her illness public for almost a year. She even kept working, shooting four episodes of the Cosby show between chemotherapy treatments. On October 6, 1999, just two months before she died, she and her long-time companion, attorney John Hansbury, were married in a hospital ceremony. Following her death on December 3, Hansbury called the actress a "performer of brilliance and a loyal and trusted friend to everyone she encountered."