Phyllis Newman

Biography

Phyllis Newman (born March 19, 1933) is a American actress and singer. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, she attended PS 17 and Lincoln High School where she was voted "Future Hollywood Star" and "Most Pull with the Faculty." Newman made her Broadway debut in Wish You Were Here in 1952. Additional theatre 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 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 1979, Newman and Arthur Laurents collaborated on a one-woman show, The Madwoman of Central Park West, featuring 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. 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. Other television credits include The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Burke's Law, ABC Stage 67, thirtysomething, and Murder, She Wrote. On screen she appeared in Bye Bye Braverman, The Beautician and the Beast, A Price Above Rubies, and The Human Stain. In 1995, Newman founded The Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative of The Actors' Fund of America. For the last 12 years she has hosted the annual Nothing Like a Dame galas, which have raised more than US$3.5 million that have served 2,500 women in the entertainment industry.