“The Brassiest Of The Old Broads”

That’s how Sean O’Neal eulogizes Elaine Stritch, the legendary Broadway star most recently known as Jack Donaghy’s mom:

Stritch’s persona – bawdy, blunt, and with a 3 a.m. voice that sounded like it was carelessly swinging around a vodka stinger – was established early on stage, where Stritch came up as an understudy for Ethel Merman who soon had Noel Coward reworking all of 1961’s Sail Away around her scene-stealing presence. Her Broadway roles included star-making turns in shows like Bus Stop, Goldilocks, and Sondheim’s Company, which yielded what would become one of her signature tunes, “The Ladies Who Lunch.” A scathing look at high society women punctuated by mock “I’ll drink to that” toasts, Stritch’s recording for the original cast album – as documented by D.A. Pennebaker in his behind-the-scenes film – was an exhausting, 14-hour struggle, a testament to just how hard Stritch worked to get it right. In the documentary’s climactic final scene, Stritch returns the next day to nail it in one triumphant take.

Charles Isherwood adds, “It’s common to describe a talent as singular, one of a kind or larger than life. And yet those words seem strictly accurate, albeit a bit flimsy, when applied to Elaine Stritch”:

Perhaps more than any other performer, she embodied the contradictions that churn in the hearts of so many actors and singers:

Her constitution seemed to be equal parts self-assurance and self-doubt, arrogance and vulnerability. A need to be admired did constant combat with a nagging fear of being rejected. But unlike most performers, Ms. Stritch never felt the necessity (or had the filter) to mask either the egotism or the fragility, in public or in private. She made the complications of her own personality part of her art, indeed the wellsprings of it. And in acknowledging the depth of her needs, she touched a universal chord.

Sophie Gilbert reflects on the above video:

More than her epitaph, her alcoholism, her TV roles, and even her outlandish, cantankerous personality, Stritch will most likely be remembered for the song that’s now as inextricably hers as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is Judy Garland’s: “Ladies Who Lunch,” from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Stritch originated the role of Joanne, a bitter, booze-addled woman of a certain age who rants exquisitely about the vacuity of wealthy socialites and their daily proclivities while gesturing extravagantly with a martini. The irony of the number isn’t lost on Joanne, nor was it on the actress who played her, with Stritch telling a Times reporter in 1968, “I drink, and I love to drink, and it’s part of my life.” (She quit eventually, although started having a daily cocktail or two again in her 80s.)

Stritch’s voice – raspy, rough, and almost acidic in its ability to cut through a note – was utterly unlike the identikit vibratos that tend to proliferate around Broadway. In a recording of “Ladies Who Lunch” from the ’70s, filmed for PBS, she sits on a stool in a white shirt and stares aggressively at the camera, eking out syllables with all the confidence of one who knows the conductor follows her. “The ones who follow the rules/ And meet themselves at the schools/ Too busy to know that they’re fools/ Aren’t they a gem?” she half-screams, eventually letting out a roar of feral frustration at how infuriating it all is. “I’ll drink to them.”

You can see the full gamut of emotions Stritch accesses in that video, from self-awareness to theatricality to vulnerability to a wink and a smile. It’s that melding of fear and bravado that made musical theatergoers adore her so, as she drank to overcome crippling stage fright and wrestled with insecurity every time she opened her mouth to sing.

For more, go check out the documentary recently made about her: