Madeline Kahn, Barbra's What's Up, Doc? Co-Star, Dies

Posted/Updated: December 4, 1999 - 6:00 p.m. ET

Actress Madeline Kahn died yesterday at 57 after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Kahn was most universally recognized for her sexy vamp roles in Mel Brooks' hit comedies Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. She was certainly admired and first discovered by Barbra Streisand fans in her hilarious starmaking portrayal of the rattled and plain-looking Eunice Burns, fiance of Dr. Howard Bannister and foil of Judy Maxwell (Streisand) in the 1972 comedy What's Up, Doc?.

Her husband, John Hansbury, said, "We all suffered a great loss today. Madeline was a performer of brilliance and a loyal and trusted friend to everyone she encountered. ... While we mourn her passing, we celebrate a full and wonderful life." Although she first acknowledged the illness publicly just last month, saying she was undergoing aggressive treatment, Kahn had been fighting the disease for the past year, said Jeff Schneider, a spokesman for the William Morris Agency. "It is my hope that I might raise awareness of this awful disease," she said, "and hasten the day that an effective test can be discovered to give women a fighting chance to catch this cancer in its earliest stage."

"She is one of the most talented people that ever lived," Mel Brooks once said. "I mean, either in stand-up comedy, or acting, or whatever you want, you can't beat Madeline Kahn." She was an Emmy winner for Wanted: The Perfect Guy, a two-time Oscar nominee for Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles, a three-time Golden Globe nominee for What's Up Doc, Paper Moon, and Young Frankenstein, a Tony winner for The Sisters Rosensweig, and three-time Tony nominee (In the Boom Boom Room, On the Twentieth Century, and Born Yesterday). She was a comedienne, most recently co-starring as wacky Pauline Fox on CBS's Cosby and giving an American Comedy Award-nominated performance as Blanche Munchnik in the film Mixed Nuts. She was also an operatically trained singer.

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