Benay Venuta was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actress, singer and dancer.

Born Benvenuta Rose Crooke in San Francisco, Venuta attended finishing school

Finishing school

A finishing school is "a private school for girls that emphasises training in cultural and social activities." The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the educational experience, with classes primarily on etiquette...

 in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 and lived in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 where she worked as a dancer before returning to the States. She made her first screen appearance in the silent Trail of '98 in 1928. She also appeared in Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun (film)

Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American musical comedy film loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The Metro Goldwyn Mayer release, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Sidney Sheldon based on the 1946 stage musical of the same name, was directed by George Sidney...

, Call Me Mister

Call Me Mister

Call Me Mister is a revue with sketches by Arnold Auerbach and words and music by Harold Rome. The title refers to returning soldiers who expected to be addressed as civilians instead of by their military rank....

, and Bullets Over Broadway

Bullets Over Broadway

Bullets Over Broadway is a 1994 crime-comedy film written by Woody Allen and Douglas McGrath and directed by Woody Allen. It stars an ensemble cast including John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Chazz Palminteri, and Jennifer Tilly....

.

Venuta made her Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 debut when she replaced Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

 in the lead role of Reno Sweeney in Cole Porter

Cole Porter

Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...

's Anything Goes

Anything Goes

Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...

in 1935. The two remained close friends and co-starred in a revival of Annie Get Your Gun in 1966. Additional Broadway credits included By Jupiter

By Jupiter

By Jupiter is a musical with a book by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. The musical is based on the play The Warrior's Husband by Julian F. Thompson, set in the land of the Amazons...

(1942), Hazel Flagg

Hazel Flagg

Hazel Flagg is a musical with a book by Ben Hecht, lyrics by Bob Hilliard, and music by Jule Styne. The musical is based on the 1937 screwball comedy film Nothing Sacred...

(1953), and Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy (play)

Romantic Comedy is a play by Bernard Slade, author of Same Time, Next Year.The plot focuses on Phoebe Craddock and Jason Carmichael, playwrights who meet and decide to collaborate just as he is getting married...

(1979). In 1958, she was cast as private eye Bertha Cool

Cool and Lam

Cool and Lam is the fictional American private detective firm that is the center of a series of detective novels written by Erle Stanley Gardner using the pen name of A. A...

 in a television pilot for a series to be called Cool and Lam, based on the novels by Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner was an American lawyer and author of detective stories, best known for the Perry Mason series, he also published under the pseudonyms A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J...

 writing as A. A. Fair, but the pilot remains the only episode in existence.

Venuta's summer stock

Summer Stock

For the article about the theatre genre, see Summer stock theatre.Summer Stock is a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical made in 1950. The film was directed by Charles Walters and stars Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Eddie Bracken, Gloria DeHaven, Marjorie Main, and Phil Silvers...

 and regional theatre

Regional theatre in the United States

Regional theaters, or resident theaters, in the United States are professional or semi-professional, theater companies that produce their own seasons. The term regional theatre most often refers to professional theatres outside of New York City...

 credits included A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. Inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, it involves the romantic lives of several couples. Its title is a literal English translation of the German name for Mozart's Serenade...

, Bus Stop

Bus Stop (play)

Bus Stop is a 1955 play by William Inge. The 1956 film is only loosely based upon it.-Characters:Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements. It is set in a diner in rural Kansas, about 20 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri during a snowstorm from which bus passengers must take...

, Gypsy

Gypsy: A Musical Fable

Gypsy is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Gypsy is loosely based on the 1957 memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous striptease artist, and focuses on her mother, Rose, whose name has become synonymous with "the ultimate show business...

, Come Blow Your Horn

Come Blow Your Horn

Come Blow Your Horn was Neil Simon's first play, which premiered in the United States in 1961 and had a London production in 1962 at the Prince of Wales Theatre.-Act Summaries:Time: The Present...

, Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many...

, The Prisoner of Second Avenue

The Prisoner of Second Avenue

The Prisoner of Second Avenue is an American black comedy play by Neil Simon, later made into a film released in 1975.The play ran on Broadway from November 1971 until September 1973, with Peter Falk and Lee Grant starring as Mel and Edna Edison, and Vincent Gardenia as Mel's brother Harry. The...

, Little Me

Little Me

Little Me was the parody "confessional" self-indulgent autobiography of "Belle Poitrine" , subtitled The Intimate Memoirs of the Great Star of Stage, Screen and Television, by Patrick Dennis, who had achieved a great success with Auntie Mame...

, and Pal Joey.

Radio and television

Venuta was a vocalist on such shows as Freddie Rich's Penthouse Party, Duffy's Tavern

Duffy's Tavern

Duffy's Tavern was a popular American radio situation comedy which ran for a decade on several networks , concluding with the December 28, 1951 broadcast....

and Take a Note. In 1948, she was the host of Keep Up with the Kids, a Mutual radio quiz show in which celebrity parents (Roddy McDowall

Roddy McDowall

Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...

, Penny Singleton

Penny Singleton

Penny Singleton was an American film actress. Born Marianna Dorothy Agnes Letitia McNulty in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she was the daughter of an Irish-American newspaperman Benny McNulty — from whom she received the nickname "Penny" because she was "as bright as a penny".During her sixty...

, Pat O'Brien

Pat O'Brien (actor)

Pat O’Brien was an American film actor with more than one hundred screen credits.-Early life:O’Brien was born William Joseph Patrick O’Brien to an Irish-American Catholic family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He served as an altar boy at Gesu Church while growing up near 13th and Clybourn streets...

) competed against their children.

Television audiences knew her as Jean Smart

Jean Smart

Jean E. Smart is an American film, television, and stage actress. She is known for her comedic roles, one of the best known being her role as Charlene Frazier Stillfield on the CBS sitcom Designing Women. She later gained critical acclaim for dramatic work, with her portrayal of Martha Logan on 24...

's prim and proper mother-in-law Ellen Stillfield in the sitcom

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 Designing Women

Designing Women

Designing Women is an American television sitcom that centered on the working and personal lives of four Southern women and one man in an interior design firm in Atlanta, Georgia. It aired on the CBS television network from September 29, 1986 until May 24, 1993. The show was created by head writer...

.

Venuta was married and divorced three times. She had two daughters from her second marriage to film producer Armand Deutsch. She was married to actor Fred Clark

Fred Clark

Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film character actor.-Career:Born in Lincoln, California, Clark made his film debut in 1947 in The Unsuspected. His 20-year film career included almost 70 films, and numerous television appearances...

 from 1952–62. She died from lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 at age 84.

External links