Charlotte Rae

Charlotte Rae, the quavery-voiced redhead who started out on Broadway but was best known as a warmhearted, wisecracking housemother in two hit 1980s sitcoms, died Sunday at home in Los Angeles. She was 92.

Her death was confirmed in an email by Paul Hilepo, her manager.

Known for her wide smile and plump figure, Ms. Rae was a fixture on Broadway and television for six decades. But along with other stars from the golden age of Broadway like Betty Garrett and Bea Arthur, she found her greatest success in sitcoms, beginning in the early years of television.

Ms. Rae was known to millions of Americans as Edna Garrett, a part she played on two shows: “Diff’rent Strokes,” where she was the housekeeper to three children, one of them played by Gary Coleman, and “The Facts of Life,” a spinoff in which she looked after a group of teenage girls at a private school. After a slow start in 1979 — Ms. Rae’s contract allowed her to return to “Diff’rent Strokes’’ if the spinoff was a flop — the series evolved into a huge success and became known for tackling topical issues from a young woman’s perspective: among them eating disorders, sex, drugs and AIDS.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2015, Ms. Rae said that she had begged the producers of “The Facts of Life” to allow her character to “lose her temper, yell at the kids. Let her be a human being.” They declined. “Mrs. G” remained the epitome of adult reason.

Ms. Rae left at the beginning of the eighth season, citing health problems (she underwent surgery and had a pacemaker installed in 1982), and was replaced by Cloris Leachman for the remainder of the show’s run.

Her first television success came in the early 1960s with “Car 54, Where Are You?,” in which she played Sylvia Schnauser, the wife of an irascible police officer played by Al Lewis. She also appeared on numerous other shows, including “The Phil Silvers Show,” “The Defenders,” “Barney Miller” and “Good Times.” She was a cast member on the short-lived 1975 sitcom “Hot L Baltimore,” based on a Lanford Wilson play, and played Molly the Mail Lady in early episodes of “Sesame Street.”

She was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.

Charlotte Rae Lubotsky was born on April 22, 1926, in Milwaukee to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Meyer Lubotsky and the former Esther Ottenstein, who had been a childhood friend of the future Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. She wanted to act from a young age and headed to New York in 1948 after briefly attending Northwestern University.

She found success on Broadway and off for about 20 years, appearing in 10 productions, most notably as Mrs. Peachum in the celebrated 1954 revival of “The Threepenny Opera” and Mammy Yokum in “Li’l Abner” in 1956. Both roles were extremely matronly, even though she was not yet 30 when she played them.

She also recorded an album, “Songs I Taught My Mother: Silly, Sinful & Satiric Selections,” in 1955. Consisting mostly of show tunes, it poked fun at the Gabor sisters and Marlene Dietrich. She received two Tony Award nominations: in 1966 for best featured actress in a musical for “Pickwick” and in 1969 for best actress in a play for “Morning, Noon and Night.” Her last Broadway appearance was in 1973, in the short-lived David Rabe play “In the Boom Boom Room,” as the mother of a go-go dancer played by Madeline Kahn.

She considered an Off Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s one-woman play “Happy Days” in 1990 to be her career highlight — “like ‘Hamlet’ to a man,” she said, paraphrasing Peggy Ashcroft’s description of her joyously existential character, who is buried up to her neck in dirt. “Miss Rae holds firmly to the author’s inclinations — the pauses, stops and starts and poetic lilt of language,’’ Mel Gussow of The New York Times wrote of Ms. Rae’s performance. “With an ebullience that seems to spring from conviction, she goes about her everyday life, undeterred by the fact of her entrapment.”

She continued performing into her 80s. She appeared in “The Vagina Monologues” Off Broadway in 1993, in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of “Pippin” in 2000, and in a concert version of the 1971 musical “70, Girls, 70” at City Center Encores! in 2006. Onscreen, she appeared in the movie version of “Hair” in 1980; as an older woman who has an affair with Adam Sandler’s character in “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” in 2008; and as the mother of Kevin Kline’s character in “Ricki and the Flash” in 2015.

She was married from 1951 to 1975 to the composer and sound editor John Strauss, who often accompanied her on piano. Mr. Strauss died in 2011.

In her autobiography, “The Facts of My Life,” written with her son Larry Strauss and published in 2015, Ms. Rae said that both she and Mr. Strauss had struggled with alcoholism, and that after 25 years of marriage Mr. Strauss announced that he was bisexual and wanted an open relationship. They divorced, and Ms. Rae never remarried.

“I have wonderful friends,’’ she said in 2015. “I’m not just a lonely old lady.”

She also wrote that her son Andy was found to be autistic at age 16 and at one point was held at the juvenile ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He died of a heart attack in his 40s. She said there was nothing more devastating in her life than his autism and early death.

For all her success as a performer, Ms. Rae never forgot how difficult it had been to grow up plump and short. “I felt inferior,” she once told TV Guide. “I had this tremendous need to perform. I wanted to be acceptable to my peers. I thought if I could just be a big star, I’d feel like somebody too.” Actress. She was best known to television viewers as 'Edna Garrett,' the affable housemother on the popular NBC sitcom "The Facts of Life" from 1979 to 1986. She was also known for her role as the long-suffering housewife 'Sylvia Schnauser' on the early 1960s NBC sitcom "Car 54, Where Are You? from 1961 to 1963. Born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky, she started acting early with the Children's Theatre of Wauwatosa and later on radio. As a teenager, she won a summer apprenticeship with the Port Players, a professional summer theater company. She also was a regular on the stage at Shorewood High School. In 1944, he attended Northwestern University and studied alongside other later well-known actors and actresses such as Charlton Heston, Paul Lynde, Jeffrey Hunter, and Cloris Leachman. In 1948, she made the decision to leave school and go to New York to seek fame and fortune as a singer and dancer. She made her Broadway debut in 1952 in the play "Three Wishes for Jamie" and followed it up with other performances in such plays as "The Threepenny Opera" and "L'il Abner." She went on to later receive two Tony Award nominations in her career, for "Pickwick" in 1966 and "Morning, Noon, and Night" in 1969. She also recorded an album in 1955 which was titled "Songs I Taught My Mother." She made her first television appearance in 1951 on the television series "Once Upon a Time." Besides "The Facts of Life" and "Car 54, Where Are You," she went on to appear in many television series during her career such as "The Phil Silvers Show," "Sesame Street," "The Paul Lynde Show," "Hot L Baltimore," "Diff'rent Strokes" (where she originated the 'Edna Garrett' character), "Sisters," and "ER." She made her first film appearance in 1969 in "Hello Down There." Her big-screen credits would later include such films as "Bananas" (1971), "Rabbit Test" (1978), "Hair" (1979), "Nowhere" (1997), and "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" (2008). She also did voice work on several animated series. She passed away after a long battle with cancer.

(bio by: Mr. Badger Hawkeye)

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Aug 12 2018, 2:11:14 UTC