Jane Connell

Who was Jane Connell?

Jane Sperry Connell was an American character actress. She was born in Berkeley, California to Louis Wesley and Mary Bennett.

Connell began her career with her husband, Gordon, entertaining in San Francisco night clubs such as the The Purple Onion and The Hungry I. Eventually the couple moved to New York City, where Connell made her Off-Broadway debut in the 1955 revival of The Threepenny Opera, a long-running hit at the Theatre de Lys. In the London production of Once Upon a Mattress, Connell starred as Winifred, the role that Carol Burnett originated in New York.

Connell's most prominent success came in 1966 when she was cast as Agnes Gooch in the original Broadway production of Jerry Herman's Mame. She recreated the role in the 1974 screen adaptation after the film's star, Lucille Ball, became dissatisfied with Madeline Kahn, who had been signed originally to play Gooch.

Only four-foot-eleven, Connell was described as a master of the large comic gesture in The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, which described her as "a tiny woman with a giant, squeaking voice".