Marcia Lewis, Stage Actress and Singer, Dies at 72
By BRUCE WEBERDEC. 22, 2010
Marcia Lewis, an actress and singer known for bringing a comic brassiness to Broadway revivals of “Grease” and “Chicago,” died on Tuesday in Nashville. She was 72.
The cause was lung cancer, said her husband, Fred Bryan.
A sturdy woman with a trumpet of a voice that she could muster to comically piercing effect, Ms. Lewis came to prominence late in her performing life, when she was already in her 50s. She earned her first Broadway credit in the original production (though not the original cast) of “Hello, Dolly!”
She subsequently led the respectable career of a character actress for three decades, appearing in television sitcoms, occasional films and theater productions on and Off Broadway. Then, in 1994, she landed a role in a revival of the hit 1972 musical “Grease.”The revival, which also starred Rosie O’Donnell, was roundly scorned by critics but lasted four years, and Ms. Lewis was nominated for a Tony Award as best featured actress for her performance as Miss Lynch, the crabby old-maid English teacher.
In 1996 she was in the opening-night cast of the long-running Broadway hit “Chicago,” which began life as part of the “Encores!” series of musicals in concert. (The original “Chicago” ran on Broadway from 1975 to 1977.) Ms. Lewis played Mama Morton, a prison matron who shares the profane show-stopping duet “Class” with the murderess Velma Kelly and belts out an audience favorite of her own, “When You’re Good to Mama.” Again she was nominated for a Tony.
Marcia Lewis, left, and Bebe Neuwirth in “Chicago,” from 1996. Ms. Lewis was nominated for a Tony for her role. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
“She was so outrageous and so excellent,” said Joel Grey, a friend of Ms. Lewis’s who also starred in “Chicago.” “People used to gather in the wings to watch her.”
Marcia Bernice Lewis was born in Melrose, Mass., outside Boston, on Aug. 18, 1938. Her father, an engineer for General Electric, was transferred when Marcia was a girl, and she grew up mostly in Cincinnati. She attended the University of Cincinnati and became a registered nurse, but she also performed in local theater productions and in her early 20s moved to New York City to become a professional actress. Before landing the “Hello, Dolly!” job, she worked at a hospital taking care of newborns.
Ms. Lewis played Miss Hannigan in the original Broadway run of “Annie” and Golde in the 1990 revival of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Her other theater credits include the musicals “Rags” and “Rosa” and the 1989 revival of Tennessee Williams’s “Orpheus Descending,” with Vanessa Redgrave.
On television, she appeared in “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Baretta,” “Happy Days,” “Kate and Allie,” “Mr. Belvedere,” “Goodtime Girls” and the mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man.” She was also a cabaret singer and recorded a solo album, “Nowadays,” in 1998.
Ms. Lewis’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her husband, an accountant and investment banker she married in 2001, she is survived by a brother, Edwin Parker Lewis, known as Pete, of Milford, Ohio; three stepchildren, Mary Fortin of Memphis, Margaret Hakimian of Melrose, Mass., and William Felix Bryan, known as Felix, of Chapel Hill, Tenn.; and six step-grandchildren.
Amanda S. Stevenson 
