Elaine Cancilla Orbach, 69, actress, widow of Jerry Orbach
bway...@gmail.com
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Elaine Orbach
Elaine Orbach, born January 19th, 1940 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
the Daughter of Anna and Salvatore Cancilla. The cause of death was
pneumonia.
From the age of ten to sixteen she studied dance at the Community
School of Pittsfield. A teacher took her to New York where she
auditioned for George Balanchine at the School of the American Ballet.
She was accepted at the school with a full scholarship and started
classes at age seventeen. She was placed in the professional ballet
class with Jacques D'Amboise, Melissa Hayden, and budding ballerinas
including Patricia McBride. After seeing the original production of
West Side Story at the Winter Garden Theatre she decided to become a
show dancer. Following a stint in summer stock in North Tonawanda, she
landed her first Broadway musical, Fiorello!, at age nineteen.
She went directly from that show into How To Succeed in Business
Without Really Trying where she became a favorite dancer of
choreographer Bob Fosse. During her breaks in the performance of How
to Succeed she and the other dancers would sneak over to the Imperial
Theatre where Carnival! was playing, and watch her future husband,
Jerry Orbach and Anna Maria Alberghetti in the show. More Broadway
shows followed including Here's Love!, Flora, the Red Menace, Baker
Street, and Sweet Charity. After a leading role in the national tour
of Sweet Charity she turned her career to summer stock. For eight
years, she was a featured lead in such theatres as the famous Melody
Top theatre in Milwaukee. She starred in many shows including South
Pacific and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Bob Fosse called her and asked
her to standby for Chita Rivera in the original company of Chicago on
Broadway. It was there she met Jerry Orbach for the first time.
They dated for almost a year, finally deciding to get married while
both were performing on the national tour of Neil Simon's Chapter Two.
After they were married, Elaine left show business and devoted herself
to her marriage. Along with her husband, she was an ardent supporter
of many charities.
Elaine recently completed a memoir of her marriage to Jerry Orbach,
Remember How I Love You: Ordinary Moments in an Extraordinary
Marriage, with co-author Ken Bloom. It will be published this fall by
Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint.
She is predeceased by her husband, Jerry Orbach. She is survived by a
sister, Rita Hubbard, and a brother Robert Cancilla and his wife
Patricia Cancilla. Her nieces and nephews are Alan and Sandi Hubbard,
Jeffrey and Wendy Hubbard, David and Mary Cancilla, Paul Cancilla,
Jackie and Joseph Harrington, Patricia and David Lynch. She also had
eight beautiful grand nieces and nephews.
Funeral arrangements are private.
Donations can be made to The Elaine and Jerry Orbach Musical Theatre
Fellowship through the Theatre Hall of Fame or the Jerry Orbach Fund
for Prostate Research at Sloan-Kettering Hospital.
Kris Baker
news:2daa59dc-7f48-4898...@l22g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
> This press release was just posted on the All That Chat message board.
> =====
>
> Elaine Orbach
>
> Elaine Orbach, born January 19th, 1940 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
> the Daughter of Anna and Salvatore Cancilla. The cause of death was
> pneumonia.
>
>
> Elaine recently completed a memoir of her marriage to Jerry Orbach,
> Remember How I Love You: Ordinary Moments in an Extraordinary
> Marriage, with co-author Ken Bloom. It will be published this fall by
> Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint.
Ahhhh.....they just kind of loved each other to death, didn't they?
That's what my granny used to say.....
Kris
PyrateJohn
>
>
> Ahhhh.....they just kind of loved each other to death, didn't they?
>
> That's what my granny used to say.....
>
>
Very touching. May they both be happy together once again.
~~~~
--PirateJohn--
And the new blog at http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com
~~~~
Brad Ferguson
<2daa59dc-7f48-4898...@l22g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
<bway...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Elaine recently completed a memoir of her marriage to Jerry Orbach,
> Remember How I Love You: Ordinary Moments in an Extraordinary
> Marriage, with co-author Ken Bloom. It will be published this fall by
> Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint.
I'm glad she got the book done.
BTW, Jerry died on 28 December 2004. A nice pic of them together, from
June 2002:
http://www.blacktie-colorado.com/premiere_parties/pics/mwish_june044.jpg