Madeline Gail Kahn (née Wolfson; September 29, 1942, Boston, Massachusetts, USA – December 3, 1999, New York City, New York, USA) was an American actress, comedian and singer, known for comedic roles in films directed by Peter Bogdanovich and Mel Brooks, including What's Up, Doc? (1972), Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), and her Academy Award–nominated roles in Paper Moon (1973) and Blazing Saddles (1974).
Kahn made her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1968, and received Tony Award nominations for the play In the Boom Boom Room in 1974 and for the original production of the musical On the Twentieth Century in 1978. She starred as Madeline Wayne on the short-lived sitcom Oh Madeline (1983–84) and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1987 for an ABC Afterschool Special. She received a third Tony Award nomination for the revival of the play Born Yesterday in 1989, before winning the 1993 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for the comedy The Sisters Rosensweig. Her other film appearances included The Cheap Detective (1978), City Heat (1984), Clue (1985), and Nixon (1995).
Kahn was born in Boston, the daughter of Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer, and his wife Freda (née Goldberg). She was raised in a nonobservant Jewish family. Her parents divorced when Kahn was two, and she moved with her mother to New York City. In 1953, Freda married Hiller Kahn, who later adopted Madeline; Freda eventually changed her own name to Paula Kahn. Madeline Kahn had two half-siblings: Jeffrey (from her mother's marriage to Kahn) and Robyn (from her father's second marriage).
In 1948, Kahn was sent to the progressive Manumit School, a boarding school in Bristol, Pennsylvania. During that time, her mother pursued her acting dream. Kahn soon began acting herself, and performed in a number of school productions. In 1960, she graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, New York, and then earned a drama scholarship to Hofstra University on Long Island. At Hofstra, she studied drama, music, and speech therapy. Kahn graduated from Hofstra in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy. She was a member of a local sorority on campus, Delta Chi Delta.[citation needed] She later studied singing in New York City with Beverley Peck Johnson.
Kahn began auditioning for professional acting roles shortly after her graduation from Hofstra; on the side, she briefly taught public school. Just before adopting the professional name Madeline Kahn (Kahn was her stepfather's surname), she made her stage debut as a chorus girl in a revival of Kiss Me, Kate, which led her to join Actors' Equity. Her part in the flop How Now, Dow Jones was written out before the 1967 show reached Broadway.
Kahn appeared in two Broadway musicals in the 1970s: a featured role in Richard Rodgers' 1970 Noah's Ark-themed show Two by Two (singing a high C) and a leading lady turn as Lily Garland in 1978's On the Twentieth Century. She left (or, reportedly, was fired from) the latter show early in its run, yielding the role to understudy Judy Kaye. She starred in a 1977 Town Hall semi-staged concert version of She Loves Me (opposite Barry Bostwick and original London cast member Rita Moreno).
Kahn's film debut was in the 1968 short De Düva (The Dove). Her feature debut was as Ryan O'Neal's character's hysterical fiancée in Peter Bogdanovich's screwball comedy What's Up, Doc? (1972) starring Barbra Streisand. Her film career continued with Paper Moon (1973), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
A close succession of comedies — Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), and High Anxiety (1977) — were all directed by Mel Brooks, who was able to bring out the best of Kahn's comic talents. Their last collaboration was 1981's History of the World, Part I. For Blazing Saddles, she was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the April 2006 issue of Premiere magazine, her performance in Blazing Saddles as Lili von Shtupp was selected as number 74 on its list of the 100 greatest performances of all time.
In 1975, Kahn again teamed with Bogdanovich to co-star with Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd in the musical At Long Last Love. The film was a critical and financial disaster, but Kahn largely escaped blame for the failure. In that same year, she again teamed with Gene Wilder, this time for his comedy The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. In 1978, Kahn's comic screen persona reached another peak with her portrayal of Mrs. Montenegro in Neil Simon's The Cheap Detective (1978), a spoof of both Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, directed by Robert Moore. That role was followed by a cameo in 1979's The Muppet Movie.
After her success in Brooks' films, Kahn appeared in a number of films in the 1980s. She played Mrs. White in 1985's Clue, First Lady Constance Link in the 1980 spoof First Family, a twin from outer space in the Jerry Lewis sci-fi comedy Slapstick of Another Kind (1982), the love interest of Burt Reynolds in the crime comedy City Heat (1984), and Draggle in the animated film My Little Pony: The Movie (1986). She voiced the character Gussie Mausheimer in the animated film An American Tail. According to animator Don Bluth, she was cast because he was "hoping she would use a voice similar to the one she used as a character in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles."
Kahn participated in a workshop reading of Dear World at the Roundabout Theatre Company in June 1998, reading the part of Gabrielle. She also voiced Gypsy the moth in A Bug's Life (1998).
| Year | Image | Character | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 
|
Gypsy | A Bug's Life |
| 1986 | 
|
Draggle | My Little Pony: The Movie |