Posted by Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall on 4/15/2008, 4:21 pm
64.12.117.70
This was posted on All That Chat today:
MADELINE LEE GILFORD, DEAD AT 84
Posted by: Official_Press_Release 04:04 pm EDT 04/15/08
Madeline Lee Gilford, an actress and producer who was married to actor Jack
Gilford for 40 years, died Monday April 14 in her Greenwich Village
apartment at the age of 84.
Actress Madeline Lee met Jack Gilford at a political meeting in 1947. Both
were already committed to civil rights issues ‹ a fact that would later come
back to hurt them during the McCarthy era. There were married in 1949, until
Jack Gilford's death in 1990. She is survived by their three children, Lisa,
Joseph and Sam, as well as a grandson, Jake.
Mrs. Gilford's parents were both active socialists. Born in the Bronx in
1923, she was a child actress beginning at the age of three. She performed
on radio and shared the stage with Ethel Barrymore in the 1944 play
Embezzled Heaven. She also assisted lyricist E.Y. (Yip) Harburg on many
productions, including the musical Jamaica.
Both Gilfords were blacklisted for much of the 1950s. Mrs. Gilford's name
was one of the names mentioned by Jerome Robbins in his testimony before the
HUAC. Thereafter, the couple had difficulty finding work. They relied on
loans from friends and government checks for much of their income.
In the 1980s, she turned to producing on Broadway. She co-produced the play
The World of Sholom Aleichim, starring her husband, and the musical Rags.
She co-authored a memoir with Kate Mostel (Zero Mostel's wife), 170 Years
in Show Business. It chronicled the lives of the two couples, who were
friendly with one another; Jack and Zero appeared on stage several times.
Mrs. Gilford remained busy throughout her last decades, playing roles on TV
in "Law & Order" and in films such as "The Old Feeling," "Cocoon: The
Return," "The Savages" and the yet-to-be-released "Uncertainty" and "Sex and
the City."
*****************************
I was lucky enough to have seen her as part of a
panel discussion about the Blacklist at the Actors' Equity offices a few years back. Her mind was sharp and she told her stories with great wit. She made the Blacklist real to me in a way that books could never have done. I am only sorry that Paul wasn't there as part of his research for "The Front". May she rest, not in peace, as much as in laughter, reunited with her husband and his good friend, Zero Mostel.
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