Sandra Schaeffer

Sandra Schaeffer (Bergeson), born in 1946, is a singer, author and game inventor.

Schaeffer graduated from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, in 1968. In 1969 she replaced Madeline Kahn in the off-Broadway musical production of Promenade. She was one of the first college students ever to be hired into the chorus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago (as an alto), and later sang for the New York City Opera as a soprano, and sang a Spanish "zarzuela" directed by Tito Copobianco at City Center. She was a finalist for the lead in Broadway's Man of La Mancha and Two by Two by Richard Rogers.

After leaving New York, Schaeffer became a teacher and a mother, and resumed her career in the late 1970s as a singing telegram messenger for the "Hey!Wires" Singing Telegram Company in Chicago. She sang a telegram to President Ronald Reagan on national TV, a performance which included playing "Hail to the Chief" on the kazoo. During the 1970s, she sang the National Anthem for the Chicago Cubs on two occasions. She helped Hey!Wires owner co-write humorous lyrics for singing telegrams. They also co-wrote "The Preppy Comedy Album". Schaeffer wrote a Christmas song, Mrs. Santa, that spoofed being a wife and mother in the late 1970s.

Schaeffer played a lesbian partner in Nothing to Declare, an independent film by Julie Glass, and appeared in Chicago Story and the 2013 Superman, Man of Steel.

In 1984 she wrote her first book, The I Hate to Diet Dictionary, excerpts from which appeared in several magazines, including Cosmopolitan and was excerpted in "Like Mother, Like Daughter" from Hyperion Books.. Schaeffer and Balsamo have co-authored two books: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Sex and The Book of Indecent Proposals.

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