Legendary star of Broadway, and in some movies, dies at 97
Frankly, she sounded old well before she was old. She was in her mid 30s when she made The First Traveling Saleslady with Ginger Rogers, in which she was paired romantically with a young Clint Eastwood (seriously!):
In that one, she sings the song "A Corset Can Do a Lot for a Lady":
In the hilariously awful 1968 movie Skidoo, she does a striptease for Frankie Avalon:
and gets to sing the final musical number:
And here she is reprising her role from Hello, Dolly, singing one of the songs at the 1995 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when she would have been 74:
