Losing Luba Lisa

Had she lived a bit longer, Luba Lisa (Luba Lisa Gootnick, 1941-1972) would almost certainly be well known and associated with the other show bizzy chicks of her generation: Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Michaels, Joey Heatherton, Lucy Arnaz, etc etc. She was most widely seen in eight appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and three on Merv — otherwise she was mostly a creature of Broadway.

A Brooklyn girl, Luba Lisa studied at New York’s High School of Music and Art (now known as LaGuardia) and later at the American Theatre Wing. She danced opposite Maurice Chevalier in Pepe (1960), her only movie credit. Her Broadway credits included Carnival (1961), I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962), the 1964 revival of West Side Story (as Anita), and a Tony nominated turn in I Had a Ball (1964) with Buddy Hackett and Richard Kiley. She also toured with road companies of Kiss Me, Kate and Bye, Bye, Birdie. I first heard about her from the most unlikely of places: she had co-starred with old-school impressionist and female impersonator Arthur Blake in an off-Broadway revue called They Don’t Make Em Like That Anymore in 1972.

Luba Lisa was only 31 in late ’72 when the small plane she was travelling in crashed in a snow storm on its approach to Burlington, Vermont. She and three others perished in the crash.

For more on show business history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and please stay tuned for the upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.