Actress Madeline Lee Gilford dies
Veteran thesp became a Broadway producer
Services will be held Thursday, April 17 at 11:15 a.m. at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th St.
Married to actor Jack Gilford for 40 years, she met him at a political meeting in 1947. Both were committed to left-wing causes -- a fact that would later hurt them during the McCarthy era. They were married in 1949 and remained together until Jack Gilford's death in 1990.
Born in the Bronx, she was a child actress beginning at the age of three. She performed on radio and shared the stage with Ethel Barrymore in the 1944 play "Embezzled Heaven."
Both Gilfords were blacklisted for much of the 1950s; Madeleine Gilford was one of those named by Jerome Robbins in his testimony before HUAC.
In the 1980s, she turned to casting and producing on Broadway, co-producing "The World of Sholom Aleichim," starring her husband, and the musical "Rags."
She co-authored the memoir "170 Years in Show Business" with Kate Mostel (Zero's wife), which chronicled the lives of the two couples, who were friendly with one another.
More recently, she appeared TV shows such as "Law & Order" and in films including "The Old Feeling," "The Bird Cage," "Cocoon: The Return," "The Savages" and "Sex and the City."
She is survived by a daughter, two sons and three grandchildren.
