Anita Gillette, Underappreciated Brilliance Quiz

Answer: It was her married name when she started acting.

She was already married when when she began working as an actress, so she used what was her legal name, Anita Gillette. When she divorced Ronald Gillette, ten years later, she was well-established as an actress under the name Anita Gillette, and continued to use it.

Answer: She was pregnant.

When Gillette joined the cast of the show, she was unaware she was pregnant. Merman convinced the producers that the "kid stays in the show", even if she needed a different part. When she could no longer play the part she'd been hired to understudy, which was a major role, she was given a smaller role in the chorus, and continued there until her eighth month.

Answer: The Peabody Conservatory

The Peabody Conservatory is a division of Johns Hopkins University, which is in Baltimore, Maryland, where Gillette is originally from. Julliard is probably the preeminent place to study music in the US, but the Peabody Conservatory and Indiana University's School of Music both consistently rank very high among music schools in the US.

Her high school was Kenwood High School, a public school in Maryland.

Answer: Hollywood Squares

Gillette was often the go-to girl when a panelist was needed, and it is difficult to find a show she had not been part of. She projected a lot of warmth, and was a good guest on the types of shows that required her to partner with the contestants, like "Password" and the "Pyramid" games, and even "Match Game," where the idea is to match the contestants.

It's a little harder to picture her on "Hollywood Squares", where guest stars frequently bluff contestants into making incorrect choices.

Answer: Chapter Two

She didn't win the Tony for "Chapter Two", a Neil Simon work. She played Jennie Malone to Judd Hirsch's George Schneider, in a play about a writer who is a recent widower, and an actress who is recently divorced contemplating a relationship. However, she did receive the 1960 Theatre World Award for her work in "Russell Patterson's Sketchbook", an off-Broadway revue that was met with critical praise for Gillette, but ran for only three performances.

Answer: True

"Cabaret", one of the most respected and acclaimed shows of any kind in the annals of US theater, is a musical and a comedy with very serious themes and undertones, and an unexpected ending. It is the story of an American in Berlin just before the outbreak of WWII, who falls in love with an English woman named Sally Bowles, a singer in a cabaret, who is oblivious to what is happening around her. Gillette took over the lead role of Sally during the original Broadway run from Nov 20, 1968 until the show closed on Sep 6, 1969. The run had begun on November 20, 1966 with Jill Haworth in the role. Penny Fuller was the understudy for Haworth, and also assumed the role briefly. Gillette and Fuller became friends, and 40 years later would do a cabaret act together called "Sin Twisters."

She once sang the title number for a TV production, and the one line that was changed for TV was "She rented by the hour." It became "She changed her heart each hour." Everything else about pills, liquor and dying young enough to leave a good-looking corpse is left intact.

Joel Grey was still playing his signature role as the Emcee when Gillette took over the role of Sally.

Answer: She played his wife twice -- as two different characters.

In one season, in an episode made mostly of flashbacks, she played Helen Quincy, Quincy's deceased wife. Three seasons later, when the writers decided that Quincy needed a real wife in the present, Gillette was asked to return, and play the character Dr. Emily Hanover, who begins dating Quincy. She had known Jack Klugman since they were in "Gypsy" together, and he personally suggested her for the role. Her usual red hair, which she wore naturally to play Helen Quincy, was changed to brown for the role of Emily Hanover.

Jessica Walter played identical twins on Quincy.

Answer: True

In 1996, she starred in "Remand", an episode of "Law & Order", where she played a character based on Kitty Genovese. In 2001, on "L&O: Criminal Intent", she played the mother of a woman based on the Excedrin killer (a copycat Tylenol killer, who, unlike the Tylenol killer, was quickly apprehended), and more than once she has played a judge on "L&O: Special Victims Unit".

Answer: Showed up in a pair of glasses exactly like the ones Fey wears.

She ended up using the almond-shaped, dark-rimmed glasses in the final filming. They really did make her resemble Fey.

It also helped that she has great comic timing.

Answer: widowhood

Her first marriage to Ronald Gillette lasted 10 years, from 1957 to 1967, and produced two children. Her second marriage, to Armand Coullet, lasted from 1982 until his death in 1998. She had no children with her second husband.