Judy Tenuta

A woman wearing a lei and a flower in her red hair smiles and waves. Comedian Judy Tenuta arrives at the opening of the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club at Universal ...

I just found out I have cancer.’ And she goes, ‘Yeah. The more she set them up and put them down, the more abuse she dished out, the more they laughed and loved her. They just won’t hire us.” She usually wore glitter eye shadow and a tiara in the pool. She was getting offers of $300-a-night gigs, and I was just doing comedy to the animals I was rescuing, yet we were better than ever. I watched her fight for her life this last year and a half with her love, Vee, by her side. She was a warrior in life and in death. Judy: “Anyway, she calls and says, ‘I got the worst news today. I bought her a foam jogging belt, and we spent hours in my pool, jogging above water and lamenting “the business.” We were two Norma Desmonds, ready for our close-ups, dying over how all the male comedians our age still got to work, still got on talk shows and got specials. Once there, she will convert the angels to Judyism, spit her gum into their mouths, ride on their backs, baptize them “love slaves,” “stud puppets” and “pigs,” and they will absolutely and forever fall in love with her. We’re not having comedians in the booth anymore.” Me: “Is Billy Crystal canceled?” “No.” People have no idea what we went through in the early days. We began as comedians in the ’70s when no one had to even pretend to treat women fairly.

The accordion-playing comedian recorded specials for HBO and Showtime, acted on the stage and screen and was nominated for two consecutive Grammy Awards.

“I really want people to see it,” she Tenuta became the first member of her family to graduate from college, majoring in theater at the University of Illinois Chicago, according to her publicist. “It was good for him,” Ms. Her mother was Polish, her father Italian, and she grew up in the nearby town of Maywood, later joking that she attended a Catholic school called “St. Then she rode on his back “while everyone, on stage and off, sang along with a tape of the Village People’s ‘YMCA.’ ” At a 1992 set in Georgia, she brought a yuppie, Oxford-shirt-wearing audience member onto the stage and persuaded him to don “a pink negligee and shower cap,” according to She was named the best female comedy club performer at the 1988 American Comedy Awards — the male winner was Jerry Seinfeld — and went on to receive two consecutive Grammy nominations, for her mid-90s comedy albums “Attention Butt Pirates and Lesbetarians” (recorded at the Los Angeles LGBTQ pride festival) and “In Goddess We Trust.” “Bring me your tired, your poor and your dumb,” she sang in one accordion-backed number, “and keep their mouths open while I spit out my gum.” By the end of the night, she had usually spit her gum onto a man in the audience, then commanded him to swallow it. Tenuta began touring the country in the 1980s, and rose to national prominence after performing on “Late Night with David Letterman” and starring in an HBO comedy special, “Women of the Night,” with Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Poundstone, Rita Rudner and Lizz Winstead. During her heyday in the late-1980s and early ’90s, Ms. A gum-snapping comedian with one of stand-up’s most distinctive voices — she might deliver the setup in a cooing falsetto, then use a husky growl for the punchline — Ms. Judy Tenuta, the absurdist, accordion-playing “Love Goddess” of stand-up, who broke into the male-dominated 1980s comedy world while wearing Grecian gowns, preaching the gospel of “Judyism” and derisively addressing men as “pigs” and “stud puppets,” died Oct.

Oddball musical comedian Judy Tenuta has died at the age of 72. The American performer, known for her brash and camp accordion-playing Love Goddess persona, ...

[Emo Philips](/comics/e/33657/emo_philips) shared an anecdote: ‘After a show, the comic who opened for her is driving her to their next gig; as they’re passing cornfields at 2 AM he asks, "So what did you think of my act" & she replies, "Ask me again when we get a bit closer to town". He said: ‘Devastated to hear of the passing of my dear, dear friend, the lovely Miss Judy Tenuta. Oddball musical comedian Judy Tenuta has died at the age of 72.