In 1980 Patti LuPone captured her initial Tony Award for best actress in a musical by embodying Eva Peron, the driven and ultimately tragic spouse of Argentine strongman Juan Peron, in the Andrew Lloyd Webber–Tim Rice production Evita. Eight years later she secured a second Tony for her depiction of Mama Rose, the obsessive stage parent of Gypsy Rose Lee, during a revival of the Jule Styne–Stephen Sondheim classic Gypsy. Throughout the intervening decades she sustained one of the most prominent careers in musical theater of her era. In contrast to earlier figures such as Mary Martin and Ethel Merman, however, she operated in an environment that rarely permitted seamless transitions from one production to the next. While awaiting fresh scores from contemporary writers or new stagings of established works, she therefore pursued roles in non-musical plays, motion pictures, and television series; devised nightclub revues and concert tours; and issued solo recordings. Her essential domain nevertheless remained the musical stage. Endowed with a commanding vocal instrument and a fiercely concentrated stage presence, she occasionally drew criticism for projecting an aloof or somber persona—an approach, if accurately described, that proved singularly suited to the morally ambiguous heroines who dominated late-twentieth-century musicals, among them Eva Peron, Mama Rose, Norma Desmond in Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, and Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, all of which she portrayed with distinction.
Patti Ann LuPone entered the world on April 21, 1949, in Northport, New York, the daughter of a school administrator and a librarian and the younger sister of actor Robert LuPone. She received her name from her great-great-aunt, the celebrated opera singer Adelina Patti, and displayed early inclinations toward music and theater while attending Northport High School, from which she received her diploma in June 1967. That September she enrolled at the Juilliard School’s newly established drama division under the leadership of John Houseman. Houseman subsequently incorporated his students into the Acting Company, a troupe affiliated with City Center, and LuPone began performing in its productions. Her first professional New York appearance came in a 1972 revival of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s School for Scandal, which opened on September 27 and completed twelve performances. The following year she made her Broadway debut in a short-lived mounting of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters on December 19, followed three days later by her initial Broadway musical credit in a brief revival of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
Remaining with the Acting Company, she took part in the October 7, 1975, limited engagement of Alfred Uhry and Robert Waldman’s The Robber Bridegroom, earning her first Tony nomination for featured actress in a musical. She next joined the pre-Broadway company of Stephen Schwartz’s The Baker’s Wife, which launched its tryout in Los Angeles on May 11, 1976, yet closed in Washington, D.C., without reaching New York. In 1977 she participated, alongside fellow cast members, in a studio recording of the unproduced musical issued by Take Home Tunes Records. She also committed to Schwartz’s subsequent project, Working, for which he supplied the book, portions of the score, and direction; the show opened on Broadway on May 14, 1978, lasting only twenty-five performances but generating a Columbia Records cast album. LuPone made her screen debut that same year in a supporting part in King of the Gypsies and the following year appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 1941.
Stardom arrived with Evita. The Broadway transfer, preceded by a studio cast recording and a London premiere, began its run on September 25, 1979, and ultimately tallied 1,568 performances. The MCA double album, featuring LuPone’s rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” achieved million-selling status. She remained in the production until January 1, 1981. Returning to film, she headlined Fighting Back in 1982. On March 2, 1983, she opened in William Finn’s America Kicks Up Its Heels at Playwrights Horizons for twenty-eight performances; Finn later revised and retitled the work Romance in Hard Times. Two months afterward she undertook a twenty-nine-performance revival of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock at the American Place Theatre, again under Houseman’s direction. On April 29, 1984, she returned to Broadway as Nancy in a seventeen-performance revival of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, delivering “As Long as He Needs Me.” Later that November she appeared in the straight play Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
In 1985 LuPone relocated to London, where Houseman staged another production of The Cradle Will Rock; the cast recording was released by TER in Britain and Polydor in the United States. While still in the West End she was cast as Fantine in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s English-language version of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s Les Misérables. The production opened on September 30, 1985, and LuPone received an Olivier Award for her performances in both that show and The Cradle Will Rock. She is heard on the million-selling double album, released by First Night Records in the U.K. and Relativity Records in the U.S., singing “I Dreamed a Dream.”
Between major musical engagements she resumed film work, appearing in Witness, Cat’s Eye (both 1985), and Wise Guys (1986), and portrayed Lady Bird Johnson in the 1986 television miniseries LBJ: The Early Years. On October 19, 1987, she returned to Broadway as Reno Sweeney in a revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, performing “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “You’re the Top.” The production ran 804 performances, earned her a third Tony nomination, and yielded an RCA Victor cast album. On December 12, 1988, she married cameraman Matt Johnson on the stage of Lincoln Center’s Beaumont Theater, where the show was playing.
As was typical, no new musical awaited her upon completion of Anything Goes, prompting a move to Hollywood for the film Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and a lead role in the ABC series Life Goes On, which premiered September 12, 1989. The program derived its title from the Beatles song “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” which LuPone performed with the cast as its theme; cast as a former singer, she occasionally sang on the series. Life Goes On became the first network drama to address mental disability in depth through a central character with Down syndrome and continued weekly until August 29, 1993. While residing in Los Angeles she made additional appearances, including a 1992 television production of The Water Engine and the June 10, 1992, Sondheim tribute at Carnegie Hall, where she sang “Being Alive” from Company; the event aired in March 1993 and was issued by RCA Victor on CD and home video.
As the series concluded, LuPone filmed Family Prayers (1993) and assembled a concert retrospective of signature material. She performed the program at the Westwood Playhouse in January 1993; RCA Victor captured the evening for her debut solo album, Patti LuPone Live! Simultaneously it was announced that she would originate Norma Desmond in Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard in London and subsequently transfer to Broadway. The West End production opened July 12, 1993, and a Polydor cast album followed. When a competing Los Angeles company starring Glenn Close was established, Lloyd Webber confirmed that Close would assume the role on Broadway. Having violated LuPone’s contract, he paid her a settlement reported at approximately one million dollars; the Broadway run with Close and later Betty Buckley failed to recoup its investment.
In July 1994 LuPone recorded Heatwave, an album of Irving Berlin songs with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; issued by Philips, the recording charted on the classical crossover lists in 1995. She next participated in a City Center Encores! concert revival of Rodgers & Hart’s Pal Joey beginning May 4, 1995; DRG Records documented the production. On October 12, 1995, she launched her own one-woman show, Patti LuPone on Broadway, for forty-six performances. In 1996 she took a recurring role on Law & Order and, on July 25, replaced Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas in the Broadway production of Master Class. She subsequently brought the play to London, then returned for the straight-play engagement The Old Neighborhood, which extended into 1998. In 1999 she created the concert program Matters of the Heart, tracing a romantic arc through theater and pop songs; she toured internationally, recorded the material for Varèse Sarabande, and presented the show on Broadway from November 13 to December 17, 2000. At the century’s turn she appeared in numerous films, among them Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story, The 24-Hour Woman, Summer of Sam, Just Looking (all 1999), State and Main, and Bad Faith (both 2000), contributing “The Song of the Old Mill” to the soundtrack of the latter.
Although she continued limited stage work in the early 2000s, including a 2001–2002 Broadway revival of Noises Off, LuPone accepted only occasional musical engagements, frequently in concert format. Notable among these were a one-night Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic in May 2000, later recorded and filmed; a filmed Lincoln Center Candide in 2004; and a filmed Passion in 2005. Additional screen credits included The Victim, Heist (both 2001), Life at Five Feet, Monday Night Mayhem, City by the Sea (all 2002), and Strip Search (2004), along with a continuing role on the HBO series Oz in 2003.
In 2005 she returned to Broadway in a minimalist revival of Sweeney Todd in which performers doubled as the orchestra; LuPone played tuba. The production opened November 3 and ran 349 performances, earning her a fourth Tony nomination and generating a Nonesuch cast album. Ghostlight Records released her solo collection The Lady with the Torch in April 2006. The following year she appeared in a Los Angeles Opera revival of Weill and Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which was filmed for television and video; the recording received Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album in 2009. After an Encores! presentation of Gypsy, producers elected to mount a full Broadway revival with LuPone as Mama Rose. The production opened March 27, 2008, and Time Life issued a cast album.
Two years later her portrayal of Lucia in the original Broadway mounting of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown brought another Tony nomination. In 2011 she made her New York City Ballet debut as Anna in The Seven Deadly Sins. A 2012 engagement at 54 Below was preserved on the live album Far Away Places, released the following year. In 2013 she joined the third season of American Horror Story and subsequently guest-starred on Girls, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Penny Dreadful, receiving a 2015 Critics’ Choice Television Award nomination for best guest performer in a drama series. She also supplied voices for Steven Universe and BoJack Horseman. Further Broadway success arrived in 2017 with War Paint, in which she originated the role of Helena Rubinstein and earned Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle nominations. That September she issued the live double album Don’t Monkey With Broadway.
