Imogene Coca

This short, wiry, pliable, zany, and beloved revue comedienne and singer is best known for her years as the female regular on "Your Show of Shows" and for her seemingly unstoppable touring in stage performances throughout the US well into her eighties. Imogene Coca was the daughter of performers and was performing herself in vaudeville from an early age. She made her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in "When You're Smiling" in 1925 when she was 17, and in 1926, she was across the river in Brooklyn performing at Werba's in "Bubbling Over." For the next three decades, Coca appeared in one revue after another, several stage musical comedies and performed her own act at such Manhattan cabarets as The Rainbow Room (first in 1937), The Silver Slipper, The Ruban Blew, and Cafe Society Uptown. It was, therefore, almost natural that when TV began to emerge as a popular art form, a singer-comedienne like Coca would be drawn to it.