Background
Lewis was born in Melrose, Massachusetts and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Lewis was born in Melrose, Massachusetts and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.
She was a registered nurse at the The University of Cincinnati Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan) and received her Registered Nurse from the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing in Cincinnati in 1959. Stage and television
Lewis made her Broadway debut in the original production of Hello, Dolly!, taking over the role of Ernestina. She appeared as the Matron in the 1996 revival of Chicago.
She appeared at the Office-Broadway Theatre of the Zanies in An Impudent Wolf (1965), the Players Theatre in Who"s Who Baby? (1968), and Playwrights Horizons in Romance Language in 1984 and When She Danced in 1990.
Lewis toured in Cabaret as Fraulein Schneider and appeared in Chicago at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, for three months. Her television credits include guest appearances on The Bob Newhart Show (1975), Baretta (1975), The Bionic Woman (1976), Happy Days (1977, 1979), the television movie When She Was Bad (1979) and Kate and Allie (1988).
Cabaret and recording
As a singer, Lewis performed in most of the leading cabarets and supper clubs in Manhattan, including Rainbow & Stars, Upstairs at the Duplex, Upstairs at the Downstairs, Grande Finale, Reno Sweeney"s, Freddy"s Eighty-Eights, Town Hall, The Village Gate, and the Russian Tea Room. Lewis also appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall.
Lewis" solo album Nowadays (1998), a collection of showtunes and standards recorded with the Mark Hummel Quartet, is available on the Original Cast Records label.
Personal life
Lewis and Fred Doctorate. Bryan, a Nashville financial adviser, were married on June 24, 2001. Lewis died on December 21, 2010, at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee, of cancer, aged 72.