Elizabeth Parrish

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Elizabeth "Betsy" Parrish^[1] (February 10, 1925 – December 16, 2022)^[2] was an American actress, singer and acting teacher.

Career

Parrish was long affiliated with the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Other teaching credits include: Circle in the Square, High School of Performing Arts, Metropolitan Opera Studio, Yale Drama School (Associate Professor Adjunct), American Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Eugene O'Neill International Theatre Institute.^[2] She was a founding member of the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company, having performed in Uncle Vanya, Hot L Baltimore, and Macbeth.^[1]

In 2004, she appeared in a one-woman New York musical revue, Moments of Being, with Betsy.^[3] In 2013, aged 88, she teamed up with Canadian dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis to create a piece based on the poems of Emily Dickinson called Bulletins from Immortality, directed by Paola Styron, which they performed nationally and internationally.^[2]

In 2019 and 2020, the nonagenarian Parrish performed her cabaret show, "Every Soul's a Cabaret", at, among other venues, the Martha's Vineyard Playhouse (Massachusetts) and Pangea (NYC), with collaborator and musical director Mark Fifer.^[1]

Acting credits

Broadway & Off-Broadway

• La Cage aux Folles, as Jacqueline (1983 thru 1987)
• Deathtrap as Helga ten Dorp; succeeded Marian Winters (1978 thru 1982)
• Keep It In the Family, as standby for roles of Betsy Jane and Daisy Brady^[4]
• Pickwick, as Mrs. Leo Hunter and as understudy for role of Rachel (1965)
• Riverwind as Louise Sumner (1962)
• Little Mary Sunshine as Mme. Ernestine von Liebedich (1959)
• Johnny Johnson as French Nurse (1956)

Feature films

• See You in the Morning (1989) as "Group Therapy Patient"
• Orphans (1987) as "Rich Woman"

Television

• Law & Order (1994) as "Judge Sally Norton"
• Kate & Allie (1989) as "Evelyn"
• The Edge of Night (soap opera) as "Zelda Moffett" (1981) and as "Buffy Revere" (1982)