(If you can't place the name, those of us well into [or past] middle age will remember Ms. Playten in the classic Alka-Seltzer commercial as the young housewife who makes a mountainous dumpling for her sick-to-his-stomach husband, then hits on a new recipe: "Marshmallowed meatballs and poached oysters!" - JR)
Alice Playten, who lent her quirky persona and comic voice to a memorable string of Broadway and Off-Broadway musical performances from the 1960s onward, died on June 25 at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. The cause was heart failure, said Sandee Cohen, her friend and neighbor. She was 63.
Ms. Playten was small, cute and elfish, with arched eyebrows, a bobbed haircut, and a pinched, whiskey voice perfect for cartoon voice-overs. (She, in fact, found much work in that line, voicing such animated works as "Felix the Cat," "Really Rosie" and "My Little Pony: The Movie.") Born in New York City, she began her acting career playing Baby Louise in the original production of Gypsy. She later told of studying Ethel Merman's performance of "Rose's Turn" from the wings. In 1963, she was Bet, Nancy's younger sister, singing "I'd Do Anything" in the Charles Dickens-inspired show Oliver! The next year, she created the role of Ermengarde, Horace Vandergelder's tearful niece, in Hello, Dolly!. ...
... she was the only member of the 1973 revue National Lampoon's Lemmings the cast included future stars Christopher Guest, John Belushi and Chevy Chase to win an Obie Award. ...
In film, she cut her most memorable figure in the 1985 sci-fi curiosity "Legend," where she put her pixie-like persona to work playing Blixx, a pointy-eared goblin who serves Tim Curry's Lord of Darkness. ...
More:
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/152182-Alice-Playten-Endearingly-Quirky-Stage-Performer-Dies-at-63-
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