Rita Rudner

Rita Rudner

Rita Rudner, born September 17, 1953, in Miami, Florida, is an American stand-up comedian and actress whose career grew out of the stage, television, books, film, and Las Vegas comedy rooms. She first worked as a Broadway performer, then moved into stand-up in the late 1970s after noticing how few women comedians were working in New York City. That shift placed her among the comics who emerged during the comedy boom of the 1980s, helped by HBO specials and repeated appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Rudner grew up in a Jewish family in Coconut Grove. Her mother, Frances, was an Orthodox Jewish homemaker from Brooklyn, and her father, Abe Rudner, was a lawyer from the Catskills. She began ballet lessons at age four. When she was 13, her mother died of breast cancer; after her father remarried, Rudner struggled to get along with her stepmother and felt a strong desire to become independent. At 15, after graduating from high school, she left Miami for New York City to begin a career as a dancer.

Her early career was rooted in Broadway discipline. She joined Promises, Promises in 1970 in a small role, then appeared in original productions of Follies in 1971 and Mack & Mabel in 1974. Around 1980, she took over the role of Lily St. Regis in the long-running musical Annie, staying with the company for more than a year before leaving in 1981. Those years gave her a performer’s timing before she became known mainly as a comedian.

After beginning stand-up in the late 1970s, Rudner made her network television debut on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982. She appeared often on American and British television, including a six-part BBC2 series recorded in 1990, and was featured on Rodney Dangerfield’s Young Comedians Special for HBO. Her comedy specials include Rita Rudner: Born to Be Mild, Rita Rudner: Married Without Children, and the 2008 PBS special Rita Rudner: Live From Las Vegas.

Rudner has also worked as a writer and actor beyond stand-up. With her husband, British producer Martin Bergman, she wrote the screenplay for the 1992 film Peter’s Friends, in which she also acted. She later played “Bunny” in Bergman’s 2011 film Thanks, which had its world premiere at the Palm Springs Film Festival. Her books include I Still Have It; I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It, Naked Beneath My Clothes, and the novels Tickled Pink and Turning The Tables. She has written plays and screenplays with Bergman, and in January 2016 appeared with Charles Shaughnessy in Act 3... at the Laguna Playhouse, directed by Bergman.

Since 2001, Rudner has performed almost exclusively in Las Vegas, selling almost two million tickets and becoming the city’s longest-running solo comedy show. In January 2011 she moved to a larger theater at The Venetian. She also created and hosted the syndicated improvisational comedy show Ask Rita, which used a talk and advice show format, and received a Gracie Allen Award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation. Her work still carries because it was built in front of live audiences, on Broadway stages, late-night television, in books, and in long-running Las Vegas performances.