Marilyn Michaels News and Appearances

Marilyn Michaels

Keeper Of The Flame

The Jewish Week
May 6, 2005

Marilyn Michaels can barely remember a time she wasn’t performing in public.

“In the past five years — in therapy — I realized I was one of those little prodigy-type persons,” she says with a warm laugh. “I was performing when I was 4 years old.”

Perhaps that was to be expected. Michaels, who is giving a Mothers’ Day concert on Sunday, is the daughter of Fraydele Oysher, a star of the Yiddish theater, and Harold Steinberg, a basso in the Metropolitan Opera choir, the niece of Moishe Oysher, a mega-star of the Yiddish theater and a famed cantor, and the grand-daughter of cantors on both sides of the family.

“It’s a strange and marvelous provenance,” the singer, comedian and impressionist says of her yichus. And it has led her to strange and wonderful places.

Like the New York public schools.

“My parents wanted me to be normal,” she says. “When I turned 7, my mother would tour and she’d leave me with my father and my bubbe. I would work with her Passover and Chanukah. She didn’t want me to interrupt my school.”

What Fraydele didn’t know was that show business was already interrupting Marilyn’s school quietly. “I was always fantasizing about being in a movie or a Broadway show,” she confesses.

How could she not be? She had only to look out the window to see where she wanted to be.

“I grew up on Second Avenue,” she says. “We lived on [East] Fourth Street and my bedroom faced the side of a theater.”

She remembers the Yiddish Great White Way fondly. “It was a very rich time, the tail end of the golden era,” Michaels says. “The Yiddish theater was all along Second Avenue and these were not little houses, they were 1,500-2,000 seat houses.”

Despite the cantorial riches in her family tree, Michaels admits, she wasn’t raised in an observant atmosphere exactly. “Here’s the thing about show people,” she explains: “My uncle’s a great cantor, but being show business we couldn’t be observant. We kept kosher, but you couldn’t afford to lose business on Friday and Saturday.”

The memory of those appreciative audiences must have been in the back of her mind when she began work on one of her latest projects, “The Oysher Heritage,” a CD featuring recordings of her famous uncle, her mother and her.

“When my uncle passed away [in 1958], my mother suddenly became obsessed with documenting and perpetuating Moishe,” she says. “Now I’m like the keeper of the flame and all I can think of is, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to perpetuate this incredible music, this heritage.”

She is passing it along, too. As you would expect from a mom whose idea of a proper Mothers’ Day is to give a concert, she has recorded a CD with her son Mark Wilk.

These days, with the Yiddish theater regrettably a distant memory (except for the Folksbiene and few other isolated survivors), Michaels is more likely to be playing a nightclub or turning up on television, although she also realized her childhood ambition, many times over, of playing on Broadway.

“There’s nothing like being on a Broadway stage, when the house is packed, it’s opening night and they go crazy,” she says. “It’s like a drug, it’s a thrill. You’re on Broadway! The downside is you have to do eight times a week.”

And it’s the same for every one of those performances. “That’s one of the reasons I love playing nightclubs,” Michaels says. “I’m very improvisational, I don’t like being hemmed in. I can just go off on a tangent. And you never know who’s going to be in the audience.”

With Michaels, you never know who’s going to be on the stage either. Her dead-on impressions run the gamut from Streisand (not surprising, since she starred in the national company of “Funny Girl”) to Jackie Mason, from Donna Summer to Bert Lahr.

She doesn’t even mind when an audience member requests someone she doesn’t do. “It all makes for comedy,” she says.

Northwood University Tribute To Marvin Hamlisch

Dear Marilyn,
Just a quick line to say THANK YOU! You were the proverbial "smash"! The Revue and your solo could not have been more wonderful....Thanks for bringing your special touch of humor, good nature and downright brilliance to the evening. You were great!

Nancy Barker
Northwood University

by Cindy Adams

Singer Marilyn Michaels, looking to bond with her teenager, recorded Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman's "A Mother's Voice' with her kid as guest artist. He first refused unless his pals were on , too. All 30 schoolkids now sing on this CD. What mums do to please children!?

Proceeds to Mother's Voices, the AIDS charity.

MAGAZINE

Many super-slim celebs would rather hear their tummies rumble than risk getting food in their teeth while hobnobbing with the likes of Ivanna Trump. "When I'm out with high profile women like her, the big sport is not so much sampling the food, but showing off what you're wearing," says comedienne Marilyn Michaels. "I can't eat in public. My lipstick is perfect and I want to keep it that way, so I'll pick at my food instead. It's afterwards when I get home that I really have to watch it. I'm a night eater-that's left over from my Las Vegas shows. These days I'll settle for rice cakes and once in a while, I'll have one or two cookies."

Michaels has a lot in common with fellow comedienne Joan Rivers, who confesses that she resists food temptations at charity events by eating at home earlier while having her hair done. The trick in passing up the goodies for Rivers is chomping on a pre-dinner half-sandwich and then later "feasting" on party salad.

It's no joke when comedienne Marilyn Michaels' lipstick gets smeared. That's why she makes it a rule never to eat in public.

GOODHOUSEKEEPING

Marilyn Michaels may be the only star I know who refuses to wear expensive clothing. "It's just not a priority. I hate to spend a lot of money on clothes," She admits, licking a tad of whipped cream from her lips- and suddenly looking like a little girl in her mother's hat. We've been talking about how the roles of wife/mother coexist. "Remember," she says, showing lots of profile in her deep black hat. "I may look like this for tea at the Plaza, but when I get home, the hat comes off, the Ylang Ylang jewelry comes off, the makeup comes off, and Mark's mommy is checking up to see that he's happy with his chicken McNuggets."

I went to see "Catskills on Broadway," en masse. This show at the Lunt Fontanne is phenomenal, and nobody in his/her right mind would want to miss it. You don't have to be Jewish to find it funny.

Love my old friend Marilyn Michaels doing her impressions and performing the entire "Wizard of Oz" in three minutes. (Her Billie Burke is masterful)

AT THE LIZ SMITH ROAST

"Liz printed it when I got engaged and when I got married, and the second I had the baby, she printed it. She knows more about me than my mother. In fact, when my mother asked me about how my life was going, I said, 'Just call Liz'. We don't have to talk at all.

Julie Andrews once told singer-impressionist Marilyn Michaels, "now that you've done me, I know that I've arrived." But Michaels' dead-on imitation of an overinflecting, Brooklyn-accented Barbra Streisand (of which she does a bit in her Diet 7-Up commercials) was less warmly received by its subject. Reports Marilyn of their meeting: "Barbra said, 'I don't talk like that.' But when she said it she was talking exactly like that."

Marilyn Michaels rewrote the classic "Cinderella" for her Resorts International show. Cinderella is Monica Lewinsky, the wicked stepmother is Linda Tripp, the misguided prince is President Clinton," my only problem was the fairy godmother," Michaels told us, her solution: Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Metropolitan Diary by Ron Alexander

The scene is the lobby of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. Michael Pollack, attending a performance of "Catskills on Broadway," overhears the following dialogue.

Woman 1: Did you know Marilyn Michaels isn't in the show anymore?

Woman 2: No! What do we do?

Woman 1: We go in. At intermission we'll ask for a refund

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I went to see "Catskills on Broadway," en masse. This show at the Lunt Fontanne is phenomenal, and nobody in his/her right mind would want to miss it. You don't have to be Jewish to find it funny.

Love my old friend Marilyn Michaels doing her impressions and performing the entire "Wizard of Oz" in three minutes. (Her Billie Burke is masterful)

AT THE LIZ SMITH ROAST

"Liz printed it when I got engaged and when I got married, and the second I had the baby, she printed it. She knows more about me than my mother. In fact, when my mother asked me about how my life was going, I said, 'Just call Liz'. We don't have to talk at all.