AP Photo/Richard Drew
Dody Goodman

Dody Goodman

Comedian known for her television appearances dies at 93

Dody Goodman, the delightfully daffy comedian known for her television appearances on Jack Paar's late-night talk show and as the mother on the soap-opera parody "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," has died. She was 93.

Goodman died Sunday at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey, said Joan Adams, a close family friend. The actress had been ill for some time and had lived in the Actors Fund Home in Englewood since October, Adams said.

Goodman, with her pixyish appearance and Southern-tinged, quavery voice, had an eclectic show-business career. She moved easily from stage to television to movies, where she appeared in such popular films as "Grease" and "Grease 2," playing Blanche, the principal's assistant, and in "Splash."

It was on "The Tonight Show" when Paar was the late night TV program's second host in the late 1950s that Goodman first received national attention. Her quirky, off-kilter remarks inevitably got laughs and endeared audiences.

After a falling out with Paar, other chat shows took up the slack, including "The Merv Griffin Show" and "Girl Talk." And there were roles on TV series, too, most notably her appearances as Martha Shumway (Louise Lasser's mother) on "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," starting in 1976, and guest shots on such shows as "Diff'rent Strokes," "St. Elsewhere" and "Murder, She Wrote."

In later years, Goodman was a regular in "Nunsense" and its various sequels, appearing off-Broadway and on tour in Dan Goggin's comic musical celebration of the Little Sisters of Hoboken. She started out playing Sister Mary Amnesia, later graduating to the role of Mother Superior.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, she arrived in New York in the late 1930s to study dance at the School of American Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and later graduated to Broadway musicals.

The actress performed regularly on stage in the 1940s and early '50s as a chorus member in such musicals as "Something for the Boys," "One Touch of Venus," "Laffing Room Only," "Miss Liberty," "Call Me Madam," "My Darlin' Aida" and "Wonderful Town," in which she originated the role of Violet, the streetwalker.