Ellen Albertini Dow
Encyclopedia
Ellen Albertini Dow is an American character actress. She often portrays feisty old ladies and is perhaps best known as the rapping
grandmother who performs in the feature film
The Wedding Singer
. She also played a disillusioned, homophobic grandmother (much to the dismay of her gay grandson) in Wedding Crashers
, Disco Dottie in the movie 54
and a victim of Christopher Lloyd
's slapstick in Radioland Murders
. In 1992 she appeared alongside Whoopi Goldberg
in Sister Act
as a member of the choir.
Sorority. She then moved to New York, where she studied and worked with the legendary dance greats Hanya Holm
and Martha Graham
. She studied acting with Michael Shurtleff
and Uta Hagen
and worked with the twentieth century’s greatest mimes, Marcel Marceau
and Jacques Lecoq
, in Paris. She did comedy in the Borscht Belt
and at the Second Avenue Theatre in New York with Menasha Skulnik
and Molly Picon
. She performed in summer stock companies in Massachusetts
, Long Island
, Pennsylvania
, and South Carolina
.
Albertini Dow worked as a director and choreographer for many productions including The Beggar's Opera
at Carnegie Recital Hall, and light operas and operas, including The Magic Flute
and Julius Caesar with famous German musical director Hugo Strelitzer, and was the producer/creator of Albertini Mime Players for 19 years. Awards include a Rockefeller grant for mime, Who’s Who Women (West), and a proclamation by Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley
.
In an episode of Will & Grace
, she portrayed the mother-in-law of Karen Walker
, who referred to her as "the goiter." Upon inadvertently helping Will Truman
muster some confidence, she becomes extremely upset when she realizes he's gay, exclaiming, "I helped a fairy
get a date! Oh my God, I'm going to hell!"
Albertini Dow also played J. Peterman
's dying mother in an episode of Seinfeld
. George tells her his secret ATM
code ("BOSCO
"), believing that she is unconscious. However, she was not, and shouts out "BOSCO!" just before she dies. Dow also appeared in three episodes of The Golden Girls
, playing different characters in each one. She showed in one episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide
as a social studies teacher named Miss Knapp (as her name implies, her character would take frequent naps). She also guest starred in the Hannah Montana
episode Debt It Be. She also played a dying woman in the Scrubs
episode "My Faith in Humanity". She voiced Yzma's mother, Azma, on The Emperor's New School
. Most recently, she guest starred as Emily Rose on the ABC series According to Jim
. She was also just featured in Jeff Dunham
's "Guitar Guy" Brian Haner
's video, "Grandma Was A Racist".
She was married to Eugene Dow until his death in 2004.
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...
grandmother who performs in the feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
The Wedding Singer
The Wedding Singer
The Wedding Singer is a 1998 romantic comedy film written by Tim Herlihy and directed by Frank Coraci. It stars Adam Sandler as a wedding singer in the 1980s and Drew Barrymore as a waitress with whom he falls in love....
. She also played a disillusioned, homophobic grandmother (much to the dismay of her gay grandson) in Wedding Crashers
Wedding Crashers
Wedding Crashers is a 2005 American comedy film directed by David Dobkin. It stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, with Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, Diora Baird, Jane Seymour, and an uncredited Will Ferrell....
, Disco Dottie in the movie 54
54 (film)
54 is a 1998 drama film written and directed by Mark Christopher, starring Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, and Neve Campbell...
and a victim of Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...
's slapstick in Radioland Murders
Radioland Murders
Radioland Murders is a 1994 black comedy mystery film directed by Mel Smith and co-written/produced by George Lucas. Radioland Murders is set in the 1939 atmosphere of old-time radio and pays homage to the screwball comedy films of the 1930s...
. In 1992 she appeared alongside Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
in Sister Act
Sister Act
Sister Act is a 1992 American comedy film released by Touchstone Pictures. Directed by Emile Ardolino, it features musical arrangements by Marc Shaiman and stars Whoopi Goldberg as a Reno lounge singer who has been put under protective custody in a San Francisco convent and has to pretend to be a...
as a member of the choir.
Life and career
Albertini Dow was born Ellen Albertini in Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania, the seventh child of immigrant parents, a car dealership owner father and a mother also named Ellen. She started studying dance and piano at age 5. She obtained a B.A. and M.A. in theatre from Cornell University, where she was a member of Kappa DeltaKappa Delta
Kappa Delta was the first sorority founded at the State Female Normal School , in Farmville, Virginia. It is one of the "Farmville Four" sororities founded at the university...
Sorority. She then moved to New York, where she studied and worked with the legendary dance greats Hanya Holm
Hanya Holm
Hanya Holm is known as one of the “Big Four” founders of American modern dance...
and Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
. She studied acting with Michael Shurtleff
Michael Shurtleff
Michael Shurtleff was a major force in casting on Broadway during the 1960s and 1970s. He wrote Audition, a book for actors on the audition process...
and Uta Hagen
Uta Hagen
Uta Thyra Hagen was a German-born American actress and drama teacher. She originated the role of Martha in the 1963 Broadway premiere of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee...
and worked with the twentieth century’s greatest mimes, Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau was an internationally acclaimed French actor and mime most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.-Early years:...
and Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Lecoq
Jacques Pierre Lecoq born in Paris, was a French actor, mime and acting instructor.He is most famous for his methods on physical theatre, movement and mime that he taught at the school he founded in Paris, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq from 1956 until his death in...
, in Paris. She did comedy in the Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.-Name:The name comes from...
and at the Second Avenue Theatre in New York with Menasha Skulnik
Menasha Skulnik
Menasha Skulnik was a Jewish American actor, primarily known for his roles in Yiddish theater in New York City. Skulnik was also popular on radio, playing Uncle David on The Goldbergs for 19 years...
and Molly Picon
Molly Picon
Molly Picon was an American actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a lyricist and dramatic storyteller....
. She performed in summer stock companies in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
.
Albertini Dow worked as a director and choreographer for many productions including The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
at Carnegie Recital Hall, and light operas and operas, including The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
and Julius Caesar with famous German musical director Hugo Strelitzer, and was the producer/creator of Albertini Mime Players for 19 years. Awards include a Rockefeller grant for mime, Who’s Who Women (West), and a proclamation by Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley
Tom Bradley (politician)
Thomas J. "Tom" Bradley was the 38th Mayor of Los Angeles, California, serving in that office from 1973 to 1993. He was the first and to date only African American mayor of Los Angeles...
.
In an episode of Will & Grace
Will & Grace
Will & Grace was an American television sitcom that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 21, 1998 to May 18, 2006 for a total of eight seasons. Will & Grace remains the most successful television series with gay principal characters...
, she portrayed the mother-in-law of Karen Walker
Karen Walker (character)
Karen Walker is a fictional character on the American television sitcom Will & Grace . She was portrayed by actress and singer Megan Mullally...
, who referred to her as "the goiter." Upon inadvertently helping Will Truman
Will Truman
William Pierce "Will" Truman is a fictional character on the American sitcom Will & Grace, portrayed by Eric McCormack. He is a gay lawyer who lives in the Upper West Side of New York City with his best friend, Grace Adler.-Fictional character history:...
muster some confidence, she becomes extremely upset when she realizes he's gay, exclaiming, "I helped a fairy
Faggot (epithet)
Faggot, often shortened to fag, is a pejorative term and common slur used chiefly in North America against homosexual males. Its pejorative use has spread from the United States to varying extents elsewhere in the English-speaking world through mass culture, including movies, music, and the...
get a date! Oh my God, I'm going to hell!"
Albertini Dow also played J. Peterman
J. Peterman
J. Peterman may refer to:*John Peterman, operator of the J. Peterman Company*The J. Peterman Company, an apparel company*Jacobo Peterman, a fictional version of John Peterman, portrayed by John O'Hurley on the television sitcom Seinfeld...
's dying mother in an episode of Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
. George tells her his secret ATM
Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine, also known as a Cashpoint , cash machine or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English, is a computerised telecommunications device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public...
code ("BOSCO
Bosco Chocolate Syrup
Bosco Chocolate Syrup is a brand of chocolate syrup first produced in 1928. The company that produces it is based in New Jersey, and it is sold throughout the United States, Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East.-Production process:...
"), believing that she is unconscious. However, she was not, and shouts out "BOSCO!" just before she dies. Dow also appeared in three episodes of The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris, which originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show centers on four older women sharing a home in Miami, Florida...
, playing different characters in each one. She showed in one episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide
Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide
Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, commonly called Ned's Declassified for short, is an American live-action situation comedy on Nickelodeon that debuted in the channel's Sunday night TEENick scheduling block on September 12, 2004. The series' actual pilot episode aired on September 7, 2003...
as a social studies teacher named Miss Knapp (as her name implies, her character would take frequent naps). She also guest starred in the Hannah Montana
Hannah Montana
Hannah Montana is an American television series, which debuted on March 24, 2006 on the Disney Channel. The series focuses on a girl who lives a double life as an average teenage school girl named Miley Stewart by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night, concealing her real...
episode Debt It Be. She also played a dying woman in the Scrubs
Scrubs (TV series)
Scrubs is an American medical comedy-drama television series created in 2001 by Bill Lawrence and produced by ABC Studios. The show follows the lives of several employees of the fictional Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features fast-paced screenplay, slapstick, and surreal vignettes...
episode "My Faith in Humanity". She voiced Yzma's mother, Azma, on The Emperor's New School
The Emperor's New School
The Emperor's New School is an American animated television series that airs on Disney Channel, ABC Kids, and Disney XD and is produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. The show is based on the characters from The Emperor's New Groove and its direct-to-video sequel Kronk's New Groove...
. Most recently, she guest starred as Emily Rose on the ABC series According to Jim
According to Jim
According to Jim is an American sitcom television series starring Jim Belushi in the title role as a suburban father of three children. It originally ran on ABC from October 3, 2001 to June 2, 2009.-Synopsis:Jim is an abrasive but lovable suburban father...
. She was also just featured in Jeff Dunham
Jeff Dunham
Jeff Dunham is an American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance...
's "Guitar Guy" Brian Haner
Brian Haner
Brian Elwin Haner, Sr. , also known as Guitar Guy or Papa Gates is an American musician. He is a guitarist, songwriter, singer and a stand-up comedian...
's video, "Grandma Was A Racist".
She was married to Eugene Dow until his death in 2004.