Kaye Ballard

Kaye Ballard
Publicity photo late 1950s
Born	Catherine Gloria Balotta (1925-11-20) November 20, 1925 (age 91) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1951–2015

Kaye Ballard (born November 20, 1925) is a retired American musical theatre and television actress, comedian and singer.

Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children born to Italian immigrant parents, Lena (née Nacarato) and Vincenzo (later Vincent James) Balotta. Her siblings are Orlando, Jean, and Rosalie.

Kaye established herself as a musical comedian in the 1940s, joining the Spike Jones touring revue of entertainers. Capable of playing broad physical comedy as well as stand-up dialogue routines, she became familiar in television and stage productions. A phrase her mother had used when Kaye was a child, "Good luck with your MOUTH!", became her catchphrase in her sketches and on television. Ballard made her television debut on Henry Morgan's Great Talent Hunt, hosted by Henry Morgan, a short-lived NBC program, which first aired January 26, 1951. In 1954, she was the first person to record the song "In Other Words" (later renamed "Fly Me to the Moon").

In 1957, she and Alice Ghostley played the two wicked stepsisters in the live telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, starring Julie Andrews in the title role. During the 1961–1963 television seasons, Kaye was a regular on NBC's The Perry Como Show as part of The Kraft Music Hall Players, along with Don Adams, Paul Lynde, and Sandy Stewart. In 1962, she released an LP record, Peanuts, on which she played Lucy van Pelt from the comic strip namesake of the album (with Arthur Siegel playing Charlie Brown), and dramatizing a series of vignettes drawn from the strip's archive. In 1964 she had a guest role on The Patty Duke Show, playing a teacher for would-be models. From 1967 to 1969, she co-starred as Kaye Buell, a woman whose son marries her next door neighbor's daughter, in the NBC sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, with Eve Arden playing her neighbor. She also appeared as a regular on The Doris Day Show as restaurant owner Angie Pallucci from 1970 to 1972. She made appearances on the American television game show Match Game. In 1977, she was a guest star on The Muppet Show. She also appeared on the television series Alice, in which she played a kleptomaniac phony medium, as well as Daddy Dearest where she guest-starred opposite Richard Lewis and Don Rickles as a DMV clerk.