Peters, Bernadette

Bernadette Peters

Actress, singer

A “Versatile and Affecting” Actress

Received Tony Award Nominations

Made a Comeback on the Stage

Selected discography

Sources

With her dancing talent, flexible voice, and Kewpiedoll looks, singer and actress Bernadette Peters has become a premier performer of the musical stage. Groomed for show business from an early age, she took the theater world by storm when barely 20 years old, playing a small-town chorus girl who dances her way to stardom in a spoof of 1930s musicals titled Dames at Sea. Adept at mimicking the performing styles and stars of past show business eras, Peters has often been cast in nostalgia vehicles, captivating audiences as man-hungry Hildy in the wartime musical On the Town and as silent film comedienne Mabel Normand in Mack and Mabel. Even when the shows she appears in flop, her portrayals are frequently hailed as “adorable.”

Adapting her talents to television, motion pictures, nightclub entertaining, and solo recording, Peters has since demonstrated that beyond her flare for the camp and the cute lies a performer of great versatility and depth; “[She] is perhaps,” remarked Peter Reilly in Stereo Review, “the finest singing actress since [Barbra] Streisand.” Critiquing the entertainer’s first solo album, a mix of old and new songs titled Bernadette Peters, the reviewer found “no camp here … no coy inflections, and … no attempt to imitate” and noted “how sensationally good Peters can be when she’s expressing no point of view at all, just the emotion of the moment.”

A “Versatile and Affecting” Actress

Further commending Peters’s varied talents, News-week’s Jack Boll described her Tony Award-winning performance as an unlucky-in-love English hat designer in Song and Dance: “Her 20 songs become 20 scenes and 20 moods, creating a real character out of materials that might have seemed all too banal in other hands.” “Every emotion is clear and true,” concluded the critic. “[Peters] is now the most versatile and affecting actress in the American musical theater.”

Born Bernadette Lazzara, Peters was the youngest child of an Italian-American truck driver and his wife Marguerite, who had an ardent interest in the world of show business. By age three Bernadette was studying tap dancing and singing, and by five she was a regular performer on television’s Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour. Her surname was changed to Peters when she was very young to discourage ethnic typecasting, and she soon began appearing in local stage shows, landing her first major role at age 13 as Baby June in a road company production of Gypsy. She continued her show business training while a student at Quitano’s School for Young Professionals in New York City, rushing home each day to catch the 4:30 movie on television. “I got to

For the Record…

Born Bernadette Lazzara, February 28, 1948, in Ozone Park, Queens, NY; daughter of Peter (a bread truck driver) and Marguerite (a homemaker; maiden name, Maltese) Lazzara. Education: Graduated from Quitano’s School for Young Professionals in 1966; studied acting with David LeGrant, tap dancing with Oliver McCool III, and voice with Jim Gregory.

Made professional debut at age five as regular on television program Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour; made stage debut in The Most Happy Fella, 1959; stage appearances include The Penny Friend, 1966, Curly McDimple, 1966, Johnny No-Trump, 1967, George M!, 1968, Dames at Sea, 1968, La Strada, 1969, W. C, 1971, On the Town, 1971, Tartuffe, 1972, Mack and Mabel, 1974, Sally and Marsha, 1982, Sunday in the Park With George, 1984, Song and Dance, 1985, and Into the Woods, 1987; motion picture appearances include The Longest Yard, 1974, Silent Movie, 1976, Vigilante Force, 1976, W. C. Fields and Me, 1976, The Jerk, 1979, Pennies From Heaven, 1981, Heartbeeps, 1981, Annie, 1982, Pink Cadillac, 1989, Slaves of New York, 1989, Alice, 1991, and Impromptu, 1991; television appearances include specials Carol Burnett Show and Fall From Grace, 1990, series All’s Fair, 1976-77, and films David, 1988, and The Last Best Year, 1990.

Awards: Theater World citation, 1968, for George M!; Drama Desk Award, 1968, for Dames at Sea; Tony Award nominations, 1971, for On the Town, 1974, for Mack and Mabel, and 1985, for Sunday in the Park With George; Golden Globe Award for best actress, 1981, for Pennies From Heaven; Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Drama League Award, all 1986, all for Song and Dance.

Addresses: Agent —c/o Richard Grant & Associates, 8500 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 520, Beverly Hills, CA 90211.

see all the great old pictures,” she recalled to Reilly. “I developed a real love for Ruby Keeler and Rita Hayworth and Marty Martin, just the way they’d stand or look at people or dance. I have a photographic mind, and I remember exactly how they were sometimes when I sing.”

Received Tony Award Nominations

Fortunately for Peters—and unlike many child performers—her own career desires meshed with her mother’s unbridled ambitions for her. After her 1966 graduation from high school, she appeared in a few disappointing off-Broadway productions, until a minor role in Broadway’s George M! brought her acclaim. Next, the saucer-eyed, warble-voiced Peters was fittingly cast as Ruby in Dames at Sea, and her witty portrayal earned her a Drama Desk Award. Capturing the outrageous spirit of old Busby Berkeley musicals, Peters’s gift for imitation determined her success for the next few years. Though they earned mixed reviews, a 1971 revival of On the Town and 1974’s Mack and Mabel brought the actress Tony Award nominations. In her quest for challenging stage roles, Peters also performed in less typical productions that showcased her versatility, including Tartuffe and a musical version of La Strada.

Looking to Hollywood in the early 1970s, Peters hoped to expand her opportunities for important parts. Her stage success, however, had little effect on the roles she obtained, which were usually limited to secondary characters in films like W. C. Fields and Me, Vigilante Force, and The Jerk. But the musical Pennies From Heaven found the entertainer in a starring role as a Depression-era school teacher-turned-prostitute who escapes the harsh realities of her existence by imagining herself in production numbers and songs of the day. A box office failure, the motion picture nonetheless won Peters a Golden Globe Award for best actress.

Peters’s forays into television were a bit more successful, featuring variety guest spots and play performances. In 1976 she even costarred in the comedy series All’s Fair, playing a liberal photographer in love with a conservative newspaperman. While it received positive reviews, the show failed to attract viewers and was canceled at the end of its first season.

Made a Comeback on the Stage

After a nearly decade-long absence, Peters returned to the New York stage in 1982 in the unlikely role of a frumpy South Dakota housewife in Sally and Marsha. Critics found her performance accomplished and mature and felt Peters exhibited a new sincerity and directness that was evident in her next project, the unconventional Stephen Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park With George. Playing the model and mistress of pointillist painter George Seurat, Peters received rave reviews and won a third Tony Award nomination.

In the early 1980s the entertainer became a solo recording artist, delivering an eclectic mix of popular songs ranging from tunes by Fats Waller to Elvis Presley to Marvin Hamlisch. In the New York Daily News Bill Carlton declared that Peters “has perfect pipes for pop, a very supple, wide-ranging pitch that often surprises the listener with sudden delightful twists and leaps.” And a People reviewer observed, “She has carved out quite a cozy and entertaining niche for herself as a pop music archivist.” Peters pointed out to Reilly that she doesn’t “sing old songs just because they’re old.” “I’m an actress. I have to find a reason to say those words,” she explained. “They have to be ‘I’ songs with a hook, something that relates to the heart.”

Cast in another Stephen Sondheim musical in 1987, Peters played the Witch in the acclaimed Into the Woods, featuring characters from such popular fairy tales as Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk. “As the Witch,” remarked Jack Kroll in Time, “Bernadette Peters does wonders with the trickiest … part.” In addition to a nine-city musical tour with composer Peter Allen in the late 1980s, Peters also appeared in several motion pictures, including starring roles in two 1989 films, Slaves of New York and Pink Cadillac, and a part in 1991’s Impromptu. Though reviewers from both Time and Newsweek found little to praise in Slaves of New York and Pink Cadillac, both magazines pointed out the actress’s irresistible charm, one of the main reasons for Peters’s continued success both on and off the stage.

Selected discography

(With others) Dames at Sea (original cast recording), Columbia.

(With others) Mack and Mabel (original cast recording), ABC.

Bernadette Peters, MCA, 1980.

Now Playing, MCA, 1981.

(With others) Sunday in the Park With George: Original Broadway Cast Recording, RCA, 1984.

(With others) A Collector’s Sondheim, RCA, 1985.

The Songs From Song and Dance, RCA, 1986.

Sources

Esquire, January 1982.

High Fidelity, November 1984.

Horizon, January/February, 1988.

Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1989.

Maclean’s, April 10, 1989; June 5, 1989.

New Republic, April 10, 1989.

Newsweek, September 30, 1985; November 16, 1987; March 20, 1989; June 12, 1989.

New York Daily News, September 7, 1981.

People, June 2, 1980; October 19, 1981; March 29, 1982; April 10, 1989; April 24, 1989; June 12, 1989; April 29, 1991.

Rolling Stone, April 18, 1991.

Stereo Review, August 1980; December 1981.

Time, November 16, 1987; March 20, 1989; June 5, 1989.

—Nancy Pear