Lillian Roth (1910–1980)

Lillian Roth was born Lillian Rutstein to a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents Arthur and Katie Rutstein pushed her and her younger sister Ann into show business as children. Lillian attended the Professional Children's School in New York City where her classmates included Ruby Keeler and Milton Berle.

In 1917, she made her Broadway debut, and made her screen debut in a silent film the following year. She and Ann also toured together billed as "Lillian Roth and Co." or "The Roth Kids." Lillian appeared in vaudeville productions by lying about being older.
Back in New York City, she performed in a Florenz Ziegfeld production and was soon afterwards signed to a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. Among the films she made with Paramount were The Vagabond King (1930), Honey (1930) in which she introduced "Sing, You Sinners," Madam Satan (1930) and Animal Crackers (1930). As her career progressed, Lillian became more dependent on alcohol and allowed her husbands (she was married six times) to make key decisions concerning her money and contracts.

Lillian fell out of show business in the late 1930s. She first told her story to the public years later on an episode of the TV series This Is Your Life in 1953, and received more than 40,000 letters in response. The result was a bestselling autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow, written with Gerold Frank and published in 1954; a film adaptation released the following year starring Susan Hayward was a hit. The book and film revived the public's interest in Lillian, and she made the first commercial song recordings of her career, followed by an LP for Epic and another for Tops. In 1958, she published a second book, Beyond My Worth. She appeared at venues in Las Vegas, New York, and in Australia. In 1962, she was featured in the Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale and participated in the cast album.

She was also featured as Mrs. Brice in the national touring company of Funny Girl in 1964. She returned to Broadway in 1971 in the musical 70, Girls, 70 and played a pathologist in the 1976 cult horror classic Alice, Sweet Alice. Her last film was Boardwalk (1979).