Theatre & dance / Film & TV / Music
Elaine Stritch
1925–2014 · actress, singer, comedian
Broadway's tough, funny star of Company and At Liberty was born in Detroit, and after six decades in New York came home to Birmingham, Michigan, to spend her last year.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Birmingham, Michigan
aged 89- Detroit years
- 1925–1940s, 2013–2014
- Field
- Theatre & dance, Film & TV, Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Elaine Stritch was born in Detroit, the youngest daughter of a B.F. Goodrich executive, and grew up in a comfortable Catholic household in the Detroit area. As a teenager she left for New York to study acting at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School, and by 1946 she was on Broadway. Over the next six decades she became a Broadway institution, famous for her sharp comic timing and for stopping the show with “The Ladies Who Lunch” in Stephen Sondheim's Company (1970). Late in life she won new audiences with her autobiographical one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty and as Jack Donaghy's formidable mother on 30 Rock. In 2013, after a farewell run of cabaret shows at New York's Carlyle Hotel, she announced she was moving back to Michigan, settling in Birmingham near where she grew up. She died there in her sleep in July 2014, aged 89.
Highlights
- Four Tony nominations as an actress, including for Company (1970)
- Elaine Stritch at Liberty won a special Tony Award (2002)
- Emmy Award for 30 Rock (2007)
- American Theater Hall of Fame (1995)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 2013–2014
Birmingham, Michigan
Status being checked
Oakland County suburb near where she grew up; she moved here from New York in 2013 and died at home in 2014.