ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — Dody Goodman, a comedian and character actress who gained fame as the resident zany on Jack Paar’s late-night show and as the ditsy matriarch on the soap opera sendup “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” has died. She was believed to be 93.
Goodman died Sunday, said Ann-Marie De Feis, a spokeswoman for the Actors Fund Homes in Englewood, where Goodman had been living. A cause of death was not announced.
Her early success as a dancer on Broadway gave way to television in the 1950s after friends such as comic actress Imogene Coca persuaded Goodman that she was naturally funny.
Cultivating a persona in the vein of comedian Gracie Allen was made easier by Goodman’s distinctive, crackly Southern voice. It has been described as sounding “like a Tweetie Pie cartoon bird strangling on peanut butter” or “gravel mixed into a bowl of honey.” She had a loopy grin to match. Even Paar wasn’t sure what to make of Goodman.
“She seemed more like a bird-brained housewife than a ballerina” and “spoke in a distracted manner that defied description,” he said in an excerpt from his 1983 book, “P.S. Jack Paar,” on Goodman’s website. “The more she talked the more obvious it became that no one could have made up Dody Goodman.”
Her goofy interactions on the Paar show brought her an Emmy nomination in 1958, but she was off the NBC show the same year after a reported fallout with the host.
Goodman turned to “The Toast of the Town” on CBS with Ed Sullivan and took her quirky act to other TV talk shows. She wouldn’t make it big on television again until “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” in 1976.
A cult hit, the late-night show aired five nights a week and was known for its wild but deadpan humor. During the opening credits, Goodman’s sing-song voice could be heard calling out, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” The role of Martha Shumway, mother of the title character in the parody, could have been pulled from Goodman’s comic arsenal. The flaky Shumway talked to plants and had an affair with a man who fell through her kitchen roof in a hot-air balloon.
In a stage and screen career that spanned more than 65 years, Goodman portrayed the spaced-out high school secretary in the 1978 film “Grease” and appeared on Broadway in a 1990s revival of the musical, did guest roles on television shows and appeared in the 1984 film “Splash.”
