Elaine Stritch

Elaine Stritch ordered a Manhattan before the bartender knew she had walked into the place.

She was not an easy woman, nor did she try to be. She worked with Stephen Sondheim and Edward Albee because only geniuses could keep up with her demanding standards and the constant smoke in her throat.

And she never apologized for it.

She was born in Detroit in 1925 into a Catholic family that didn't quite understand why their daughter wanted to be an actress. But she headed to New York at the first chance she got. She studied with Stella Adler and shared a classroom with Marlon Brando while the world still smelled of gunpowder from World War II.

The Terror of Rehearsals

In 1970, she took the stage to sing The Ladies Who Lunch in the musical Company. That song about rich, bored women stuck to her for good. She recorded the album session for eighteen hours straight until her voice gave out completely.

D.A. Pennebaker filmed everything in a documentary that is now essential viewing for understanding the craft. Stritch appears sweating, with dark circles under her eyes and yelling because she couldn't hit the note. That brutal honesty saved her from being forgotten when other actresses her age were already filming detergent commercials.

She moved to London in 1972 after marrying John Bay. There she lived at the Savoy Hotel, drank heavily and starred in British comedies such as Two's Company. She cared less about prestige than about the daily grind.

But alcohol nearly killed her.

She quit drinking in the 1980s because she wanted to keep working and knew her liver would not give her a second chance. She returned to Manhattan and settled into the Carlyle Hotel. Living in a hotel was the only way to avoid making the bed or facing the loneliness of an empty apartment.

Retirement Is a Lie

In 2002, she premiered her one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty. She stood alone on stage in a white shirt and black tights. She talked about her miseries and her drinking binges without filters. She won the Tony Award and proved that a woman of seventy-seven could fill a theater all by herself.

Then came television. In 2007, she took on the role of Alec Baldwin's mother in the series 30 Rock. She won an Emmy for that role. The writers penned lines for her that were frightening, because they knew Elaine would deliver them with genuinely sharp venom.

In 2013, she decided she had had enough of New York and moved back to Michigan to be close to her family.

And the gamble paid off.

She died on July 17, 2014 at her home in Birmingham at the age of eighty-nine. She left behind a healthy bank account and a trail of anecdotes no fictional screenwriter could top. Her last film appearance was in the documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, released that same year.