Stritch brassy in farewell kickoff
Broadway legend Elaine Stritch kicked off a final series of concerts to bid farewell to New York, but refused to be maudlin about it, instead displaying her typical brand of sass and feistiness.
The ailing 88-year- old Tony and Emmy award winner got a sustained burst of applause and cat-calls Tuesday night from a standing-room-only crowd at the supper club Café Carlyle, but immediately tried to cut it off by pounding on the stage.
“You listen to me. This is the most frightening night of my life,” she said, dressed in a white shirt, black leather boots, a black vest and her trademark black leggings. “There’s something that really frightens me — and that’s fear.”
Stritch plans soon to retire to Birmingham, Mich. — a suburb of Detroit — after seven decades in New York City. She ends her five-show farewell on Saturday.
The 188-room Hotel Carlyle on Manhattan’s Upper East Side has been a home for Stritch for years, and her sold-out engagements there over the past seven years have been legendary.
On Tuesday, for over an hour she told stories about Rock Hudson, Stephen Sondheim, Jane Fonda, John F. Kennedy, Gregory Peck, Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. She passed around a silver jug with preprinted story ideas, but waved away requests to talk about Marlon Brando, saying, “That takes half an hour. If I were you, I’d go home.”