Peters stood among the foremost Broadway talents of her generation, celebrated for her vocal and dramatic command that placed her in a league with Barbra Streisand and beyond. Born Bernadette Lazzara in New York City on February 28, 1948, she displayed an early affinity for song and movement that led to membership in Actors’ Equity by age nine. After taking the stage surname Peters, she made her first mark in a 1959 revival of The Most Happy Fella and soon joined a touring company of Gypsy, only to withdraw from the spotlight for several years of concentrated study in acting and voice during her late teens.
A Theatre World citation recognized her contribution to George M! in 1968, the same year she received a Drama Desk Award for her comic performance in the off-Broadway parody Dames at Sea. A succession of short-lived productions followed through the late 1960s and early 1970s—On the Town, La Strada, W.C., and Mack and Mabel among them—prompting her to accept more frequent film and television assignments by the mid-1970s. Her screen career gained traction in 1979 when she co-starred with Steve Martin in The Jerk; the pair collaborated again two years later on the ambitious yet unsuccessful Pennies from Heaven.
Returning to Broadway, Peters earned fresh distinction as the lead in two Stephen Sondheim musicals, Sunday in the Park with George in 1984 and Into the Woods in 1987. For her performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance she captured a Tony Award. In the late 1980s she developed a popular cabaret program built chiefly around theater standards, highlighted by her interpretation of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” After an unsatisfying interval in Hollywood she returned to Broadway in 1993 as the star of The Goodbye Girl, a production that closed after fewer than 200 performances.
