Bernadette Peters

Bernadette Peters (born February 28, 1948) is an American actress and singer. Over the course of an enduring career starting at a young age, she has performed in musical theatre, films and television, as well as in solo concerts and recordings. Peters first performed on the stage in the 1960s and in the 1970s in film and television. In the 1980s she returned to the theatre, where she has been, for over two decades, one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway stars. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for Emmy Awards for three of her appearances. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she is starred have won Grammy Awards.

Peters is particularly noted for her starring roles in the stage musicals Song and Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, becoming closely associated with the composers Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and in films including The Jerk and Pennies from Heaven.

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Early career

She was born Bernadette Lazzara to an Italian-American family in Queens, New York, the youngest of three children. Her mother Marguerite started her in show business by putting her on the television show Juvenile Jury at the age of three-and-a-half. She later appeared on the television shows Name That Tune and The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour. In her teen years, she attended the Quintano School for Young Professionals.

At the age of nine Peters received her Equity Card in the name of Bernadette Peters to avoid ethnic stereotyping; the stage name was taken from her father's first name. She made her stage debut at age 9 in This is Goggle, a comedy directed by Otto Preminger that closed during out-of-town tryouts before reaching New York. She first appeared on the New York stage at age 10 in the New York City Center revival of The Most Happy Fella (1959). At 13 she was an understudy for Dainty June and one of the ensemble in a touring company of Gypsy. Upon graduation from high school, she started working steadily, appearing Off-Broadway in The Penny Friend (1966) and Curley McDimple (1967) and as an understudy on Broadway in The Girl in the Freudian Slip (1967). She made her Broadway debut in Johnny No-Trump in 1967. She appeared next as George M. Cohan's sister opposite Joel Grey in George M! (1968), winning the Theatre World Award.

Peters' performance as Ruby in the 1968 off-Broadway Dames at Sea, a spoof of 1930s musicals brought her critical acclaim and her first Drama Desk Award. (She had appeared in an earlier 1966 version of Dames at Sea at the off-off-Broadway performance club Caffe Cino.) Peters had starring roles in her next Broadway vehicles: Gelsomina in La Strada (1969), Hildy in On the Town (1971), and Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel (1974), all of which were short-lived. She moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s and concentrated on television and film work.

Theatre

In Song and Dance

Peters returned to the New York stage after an eight-year absence in the off-Broadway Manhattan Theatre Club production, Sally and Marsha (1982), for which she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. She then returned to Broadway as Dot/Marie in the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984), followed by Andrew Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance (1985), Sondheim-Lapine's Into the Woods (1987), and Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl with music by Marvin Hamlisch (1993).

Peters is “considered by many to be the premier interpreter of his [Sondheim's] work,” according to writer Alex Witchel. Raymond Knapp writes that Peters “achieved her definitive stardom” in Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods. Sondheim has said of Peters, “Like very few others, she sings and acts at the same time,” he says. “Most performers act and then sing, act and then sing . . . Bernadette is flawless as far as I'm concerned. I can't think of anything negative.” Peters continued her association with Sondheim with a 1995 benefit concert of Anyone Can Whistle. Additionally, she performed at several concerts featuring Sondheim's work, and performed for him at his 1993 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.

In the PBS broadcast of Sunday in the Park with George

In the PBS broadcast of Sunday in the Park with George

In her latest Broadway stage role, Peters took on the role of Mama Rose in the 2003 revival of Gypsy. Ben Brantley in his review of Gypsy wrote, “Working against type and expectation under the direction of Sam Mendes, Ms. Peters has created the most complex and compelling portrait of her long career, and she has done this in ways that deviate radically from the Merman blueprint.” Arthur Laurents: “But in 2003 there was a new Rose on Broadway: Bernadette Peters! Brilliant, original, totally unlike any of the others. In February 2006, she participated in a reading of the Sondheim-Weidman musical Bounce.

Peters has been nominated for the Tony Award seven times, and won twice. She has also been nominated for the Drama Desk Award eight times and won three times (Annie Get Your Gun, Song and Dance, and Dames at Sea). Her first Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical was for her performance as Emma in Song and Dance. Theater critic Frank Rich wrote in an otherwise negative review of the show that Peters “has no peer in the musical theater right now.” Peters won her second Tony for her performance as Annie Oakley in the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun opposite Tom Wopat.

Film appearances

In Pennies From Heaven

Peters has appeared in 22 films and is best known on screen for the 1979 comedy The Jerk co-starring Steve Martin, whom she dated. She won a Golden Globe Award as Best Motion Picture Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her performance as Eileen in the 1981 film Pennies From Heaven, again co-starring with Martin. That same year she also appeared on the cover and inside spread of the December issue of Playboy Magazine, in which she posed in lingerie designed by Bob Mackie.

She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award (Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role) for her work in the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie.

She recently appeared with three generations of the Kirk Douglas family in It Runs in the Family. In May 2006 she filmed a movie Come le formiche (Wine and Kisses) with F. Murray Abraham in Italy; the DVD was released on June 22, 2007 in Italy.

Television appearances

With the Muppets

With the Muppets

Peters was nominated for Emmy Awards for her guest-starring roles on the Fox sitcom Ally McBeal (2001), and The Muppet Show (1977). She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award, Outstanding Performer in a Children's Special, for her work in the made-for-television movie Bobbie's Girl.

She has appeared in many variety shows, has performed on the Academy Awards broadcasts, both presented at and co-hosted the Tony Awards, and hosted Saturday Night Live. She made some 12 guest appearances on the various incarnations of The Carol Burnett Show as well as appearing with Burnett in the made-for-television version of Once Upon a Mattress and the 1982 film Annie. She also performed at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony for Burnett (2003). Peters appeared often on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on the day time talk show Live with Regis and Kelly, both as a co-host and a guest. Peters voiced stray cat Rita in the Rita and Runt segments of the animated series Animaniacs. Rita often sang on the show, sometimes in parodies of songs from Broadway musicals.

Peters has co-starred in a number of television movies and in her own television series, All's Fair, with Richard Crenna in the late 1970s, for which Peters was nominated for a Golden Globe award. In March 2005, she made a pilot for an ABC sitcom series titled Adopted, co-starring with Christine Baranski, but it was not picked up.

Peters has recently made guest appearances on several popular television series, appearing as a judge on the ABC series, Boston Legal (May 2007), as a defense attorney on the NBC series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (November 2006), and as the sharp-tongued sister of Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) on the penultimate episode of NBC's Will & Grace (”Whatever Happened to Baby Gin?“).

Concerts and recordings

Peters has been performing her one-woman concert in the United States and Canada for many years. She made her solo concert debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1996, devoting the second half to the work of Stephen Sondheim. She performed a similar concert in London, which was taped and released on video, and also aired on U.S. Public Television stations in 1999.

In a review of her 2002 Radio City Music Hall concert, Steven Holden of the New York Times described Peters as “the peaches-and-cream embodiment of an ageless storybook princess… inside a giant soap bubble floating toward heaven. A belief in the power of the dreams behind [Rodgers and Hammerstein]'s songs, if not in their reality, was possible.”

Major Concert appearances

Other concerts

  • Sondheim: A Celebration At Carnegie Hall (broadcast on PBS Great Performances in 1993)–June 10, 1992
  • Hey Mr. Producer! The Musical World of Cameron MacKintosh–June 7, 1998
  • Hollywood Bowl Sondheim Concert–July 8, 2005

Recordings
Peters has recorded six solo albums, starting with her debut album in 1980 titled Bernadette. Three have been nominated for the Grammy Award. She has recorded most of the Broadway and off-Broadway musicals she has appeared in, four of which have won Grammy Awards. Additionally, she recorded songs on several other albums, such as “Dublin Lady” on John Whelan's Flirting with the Edge (Narada, 1998). On the Mandy Patinkin Dress Casual 1990 album, Patinkin and Peters recorded the songs from Stephen Sondheim's 1966 television play, Evening Primrose. Her 1980 single “Gee Whiz” reached the top forty on the U.S. pop singles charts.

Miscellaneous awards and honors

Peters has received many honorary awards over the years, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (April 1987); the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year (1987); the Sarah Siddons Award for outstanding performance in a Chicago theatrical production (1994); the American Theatre Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre in New York City (1996), becoming the youngest person so honored (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Christopher Rawson, January 25, 1996, p. C1); an Honorary Doctorate from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York (May 19, 2002) ; and the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame (June 28, 2002).

Personal

She is a co-founder with Mary Tyler Moore of Broadway Barks, an annual animal adopt-a-thon held in New York City. The goal is to promote adopting animals from shelters and to make New York City a no-kill city.

Bernadette Peters married Michael Wittenberg (investment adviser with Wachovia Securities) on July 20, 1996 at the upstate New York home of long-time friend, Mary Tyler Moore. Wittenberg died at age 43 on September 26, 2005 in a helicopter crash in Montenegro while on a business trip. Three other people were killed in the crash, which occurred when the aircraft struck a high-voltage cable according to the police in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital.

Selected stage credits

Discography

Solo

Album cover from Bernadette (1980)

Album cover from Bernadette (1980)

  • Bernadette (1980)
  • Now Playing (1981)
  • I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (1996)–Grammy Award nominee
  • Sondheim, Etc. - Bernadette Peters Live At Carnegie Hall (1997) - Grammy Award nominee
  • Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers and Hammerstein (2002) - Grammy Award nominee
  • Sondheim Etc., Etc. - Live At Carnegie Hall: The Rest of It (2005)

Cast recordings

  • Legends Of Broadway-Bernadette Peters Compilation (2006)– Sony Masterworks Broadway
  • Gypsy The New Broadway Cast Recording–Angel Records (2003)–Grammy Award winner (Best Musical Show Album, 2004)
  • Annie Get Your Gun The New Broadway Cast Recording–Angel Records (1999)–Grammy Award winner (Best Musical Show Album, 2000)
  • Anyone Can Whistle Live At Carnegie Hall–Columbia Records (1995)
  • The Goodbye Girl–Columbia Records (1993)
  • Into The Woods–RCA Victor Records (1988)–Grammy Award winner (Best Musical Cast Show Album, 1989)
  • Song and Dance-The Songs –RCA Victor (1985)
  • Sunday in the Park with George –RCA Records (1984)–Grammy Award winner (Best Cast Show Album, 1985)
  • Mack and Mabel –MCA (1974)
  • Dames At Sea–Columbia Masterworks (1969)
  • George M! –Sony (1968)

Other recordings

  • Dewey Doo-It Helps Owlie Fly Again–RandallFraser Publishing (2005)
  • Sherry!–Studio Cast Recording–Angel Records (2004)
  • Flirting with the Edge–John Whelan–Narada (1998)
  • Hey Mr. Producer!: The Musical World of Cameron Mackintosh–Philips Records (1998)
  • Dress Casual - select tracks with Mandy Patinkin–CBS Records (1990)

Filmography

Television credits

Awards
Preceded by
Sissy Spacek
for Coal Miner's Daughter		 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1982
for Pennies from Heaven		 Succeeded by
Julie Andrews
for Victor/Victoria&