Phyllis Newman
Encyclopedia
Phyllis Newman is an American
actress and singer. She was nominated twice for the Drama Desk Award
and won the Tony Award
for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
, she attended PS 17 and Lincoln High School where she was voted "Future Hollywood Star" (for her role in "I Remember Mama") and "Most Pull with the Faculty."
in 1952. Additional theater credits include Bells Are Ringing
, Pleasures and Palaces
, The Apple Tree
, On the Town, The Prisoner of Second Avenue
, Awake and Sing!
, Broadway Bound
, and Subways Are For Sleeping
, for which she won the Tony Award
for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, beating out Barbra Streisand
in I Can Get It for You Wholesale
. She has been nominated twice for the Drama Desk Award
and received a second Tony nomination for Broadway Bound.
In June 1979, Newman and Arthur Laurents
collaborated on the one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West
. Produced by Fritz Holt
, it featured songs by Leonard Bernstein
, Jerry Bock
, John Kander
, Martin Charnin
, Betty Comden
, Fred Ebb
, Sheldon Harnick
, Peter Allen
, Barry Manilow
, Carole Bayer Sager
, and Stephen Sondheim
, among others. The show ran for 86 performances at the 22 Steps Theatre in New York City.
In 1960, Newman portrayed Doris Hudson in the CBS summer replacement series Diagnosis: Unknown
, with Patrick O'Neal cast as the pathologist Dr. Daniel Coffee and Martin Huston
as the handyman
named Link. Newman was a frequent panelist on the game shows What's My Line?
, Match Game
, and To Tell the Truth
. She created the role of Rene Buchanan on the ABC
soap opera
One Life to Live
and was a regular on the primetime series 100 Centre Street
and the NBC-TV satirical series That Was The Week That Was
. Other television credits include The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
, Burke's Law
, ABC Stage 67
, thirtysomething, Murder, She Wrote
, and Coming of Age. On screen she appeared in Bye Bye Braverman
, The Beautician and the Beast
, A Price Above Rubies
, Mannequin (1987)
, and The Human Stain
.
Newman received the Isabelle Stevenson Award
, a special Tony Award
, first presented in 2009, for her work with the Health Initiative. This award recognizes "an individual from the theatre community for [his or her] humanitarian work."
from 1960 until his death in 2002. She is the mother of Adam and Amanda Green
.
Her memoir Just in Time: Notes from My Life (1984), relates her career, life with her husband, Adolph, and her bout with cancer.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actress and singer. She was nominated twice for the Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
and won the Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.
Early life
Born in Jersey City, New JerseyJersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...
, she attended PS 17 and Lincoln High School where she was voted "Future Hollywood Star" (for her role in "I Remember Mama") and "Most Pull with the Faculty."
Career
Newman made her Broadway debut in Wish You Were HereWish You Were Here (musical)
Wish You Were Here is a musical with a book by Arthur Kober and Joshua Logan and music and lyrics by Harold Rome. The musical was adapted from Kober's 1937 play, Having Wonderful Time, and revolves around a summer camp for adults.-Synopsis:...
in 1952. Additional theater credits include Bells Are Ringing
Bells Are Ringing (musical)
Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at an answering service and the characters that she meets there. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Green's answering...
, Pleasures and Palaces
Pleasures and Palaces
Pleasures and Palaces is a musical with a book by Frank Loesser and Sam Spewack and music and lyrics by Loesser. It is based on Spewack's flop 1961 play Once There Was a Russian and takes its title from the opening lyrics of the 1823 song "Home, Sweet Home": "Mid pleasures and palaces though we...
, The Apple Tree
The Apple Tree
The Apple Tree is a series of three musical playlets with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and a book by Bock and Harnick with contributions from Jerome Coopersmith...
, On the Town, 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...
, Awake and Sing!
Awake and Sing!
Awake and Sing! is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935.-Summary and characters:...
, Broadway Bound
Broadway Bound
Broadway Bound is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. It is the last chapter in his Eugene trilogy, following Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues....
, and Subways Are For Sleeping
Subways Are For Sleeping
Subways Are for Sleeping is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The original Broadway production played in 1961-62....
, for which she won the Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, beating out Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
in I Can Get It for You Wholesale
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
I Can Get It for You Wholesale is a musical with music and lyrics by Harold Rome and a book by Jerome Weidman based on his 1937 novel of the same title. It marked the Broadway debut of 19-year-old Barbra Streisand, who was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in...
. She has been nominated twice for the Drama Desk Award
Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
and received a second Tony nomination for Broadway Bound.
In June 1979, Newman and Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S...
collaborated on the one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West
The Madwoman of Central Park West
The Madwoman of Central Park West is a semi-autobiographical one-woman musical with a book by Arthur Laurents and Phyllis Newman and songs by various composers and lyricists...
. Produced by Fritz Holt
Fritz Holt
Fritz Holt was an award-winning American theatre producer and director.Born George William Holt III in San Francisco, Holt was a graduate of the University of Oregon...
, it featured songs by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Jerry Bock
Jerry Bock
Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with...
, John Kander
John Kander
John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...
, Martin Charnin
Martin Charnin
Martin Charnin is an American lyricist, writer, and theatre director. Charnin's best-known work is as conceiver, director and lyricist of the hit musical Annie....
, Betty Comden
Betty Comden
Betty Comden was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century...
, Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb
Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera....
, Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick
Sheldon Harnick is an American lyricist best known for his collaborations with composer Jerry Bock on hit musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof....
, Peter Allen
Peter Allen
Peter Allen was an Australian songwriter and entertainer. His songs were made popular by many recording artists, including Elkie Brooks, Melissa Manchester and Olivia Newton-John, with one, Arthur's Theme, winning an Academy Award in 1981...
, Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow
Barry Manilow is an American singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, producer, conductor, and performer, best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana ."...
, Carole Bayer Sager
Carole Bayer Sager
Carole Bayer Sager is an American lyricist, songwriter, singer, and painter.-Introduction:Born in New York City, Sager graduated from New York University, where she majored in English, dramatic arts and speech...
, and Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, among others. The show ran for 86 performances at the 22 Steps Theatre in New York City.
In 1960, Newman portrayed Doris Hudson in the CBS summer replacement series Diagnosis: Unknown
Diagnosis: Unknown
Diagnosis: Unknown is an American medical drama that aired on CBS from July 5 to September 20, 1960. Produced by Bob Banner, the series aired as a summer replacement for The Garry Moore Show, a variety program.-Synopsis:...
, with Patrick O'Neal cast as the pathologist Dr. Daniel Coffee and Martin Huston
Martin Huston
Martin W. Huston, also known as Marty Huston , was an American actor of primarily television and stage....
as the handyman
Handyman
A handyman is a person skilled at a wide range of repairs, typically around the home. These tasks include trade skills, repair work, maintenance work, both interior and exterior, and are sometimes described as "odd jobs", "fix-up tasks", and include light plumbing jobs such as fixing a leaky toilet...
named Link. Newman was a frequent panelist on the game shows What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
, Match Game
Match Game
Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...
, and To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth is an American television panel game show created by Bob Stewart and produced by Goodson-Todman Productions that has aired in various forms since 1956 both on networks and in syndication...
. She created the role of Rene Buchanan on the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
One Life to Live
One Life to Live
One Life to Live is an American soap opera which debuted on July 15, 1968 and has been broadcast on the ABC television network. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature racially and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social...
and was a regular on the primetime series 100 Centre Street
100 Centre Street
100 Centre Street is an American legal drama created by Sidney Lumet and starring Alan Arkin.-Premise:The show takes its name for the street address of the criminal division of the New York Supreme Court for New York County. The show aired in the United States on the A&E Network cable television...
and the NBC-TV satirical series That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
. Other television credits include The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international espionage and law-enforcement...
, Burke's Law
Burke's Law
Burke's Law is a detective series that ran on ABC from 1963 to 1965 and was revived on CBS in the 1990s. The show starred Gene Barry as Amos Burke, millionaire captain of Los Angeles police homicide division, who was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud...
, ABC Stage 67
ABC Stage 67
ABC Stage 67 was the umbrella title for a series of 26 weekly shows that included dramas, variety shows, documentaries, and original musicals....
, thirtysomething, Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series,...
, and Coming of Age. On screen she appeared in Bye Bye Braverman
Bye Bye Braverman
Bye Bye Braverman is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Sidney Lumet. The screenplay by Herbert Sargent was adapted from the 1964 novel To An Early Grave by Wallace Markfield...
, The Beautician and the Beast
The Beautician and the Beast
The Beautician and the Beast is a 1997 American family comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis and starring Fran Drescher and Timothy Dalton as the title characters. The story follows the misadventures of a New York City beautician who is mistakenly hired as the school teacher for the children of the...
, A Price Above Rubies
A Price Above Rubies
A Price Above Rubies is a 1998 film directed by Boaz Yakin, starring Renée Zellweger as a young woman who finds it difficult to conform to the restrictions imposed on her by her community. Reviews of the movie were mixed, though generally positive to Zellweger's performance. The title is a biblical...
, Mannequin (1987)
Mannequin (1987 film)
Mannequin is a 1987 romantic comedy film, starring Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Meshach Taylor, James Spader, G. W. Bailey, and Estelle Getty...
, and The Human Stain
The Human Stain (film)
The Human Stain is a 2003 American romantic thriller film directed by Robert Benton. The screenplay by Nicholas Meyer is based on the 2000 novel of the same name by Philip Roth...
.
The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative
In 1995, Newman founded The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative of The Actors' Fund of America. Since then she has hosted the annual Nothing Like a Dame galas, which have raised more than US$3.5 million and has served 2,500 women in the entertainment industry.Newman received the Isabelle Stevenson Award
Isabelle Stevenson Award
The Isabelle Stevenson Award is a special non-competitive Tony Award. It is given to "an individual from the theatre community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations, regardless of...
, a special Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
, first presented in 2009, for her work with the Health Initiative. This award recognizes "an individual from the theatre community for [his or her] humanitarian work."
Personal life
Newman was married to Adolph GreenAdolph Green
Adolph Green was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday...
from 1960 until his death in 2002. She is the mother of Adam and Amanda Green
Amanda Green
-Career:Born in New York City, Green was raised on the Upper West Side with brother Adam by parents Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green. From an early age she was exposed to major talents of Broadway musical theatre, including Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, and Cy Coleman, all of whom were regular...
.
Her memoir Just in Time: Notes from My Life (1984), relates her career, life with her husband, Adolph, and her bout with cancer.