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===Early Career=== <table><tr><td><table><tr><td>http://www.wastelandletters.com/uploaded_images/alice-ghostley-784339.jpg</td> <td>Imogene's friend Leonard Sillman had been producing an annual revue called ''New Faces'' ever since his first one in 1934 which launched the careers of Imogene herself and also [[Henry Fonda]]. One source states that it was Imogene who told Leonard Sillman about Ghostley, while another credits Murray Grand with that find. Whoever did it, Leonard put Ghostley in his annual revue ''New Faces'' of 1952 where she had a hit with her rendition of the song "The Boston Beguine". ''New Faces'' played Broadway for a year, and then toured to a 28-week engagement in Chicago, followed up by stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Four of the other aspiring members of the revue that year were [[Paul Lynde]], [[Ronny Graham]], [[Robert Clary]] and [[Eartha Kitt]], and one of the writers, in his first work for the Broadway theater, [[Mel Brooks]]. The tour was so successful, that "New Faces" was made into a Cinemascope production released in 1954, and Alice again was a co-star as was Eartha Kitt, but Paul Lynde's name does not appear in the advertisement. As amateurs, she and her sister Gladys once did an act together and were given the eerie-sounding billing of "The Ghostley Sisters."</td></tr></table> Her act, as reported many years later consisted of : "Appearing in horn-rimmed glasses and dressed in a frumpy black sweater, she stumbled across the stage as a bewildered, sexually repressed young woman, crooning to a beguine beat about her ill-fated romance with a Harvard man, underneath a 'Voodoo moon' in Boston." <table><tr><td>At the Fireside Inn in New York City, where she was singing, Alice met Italian-born actor Felice Antonio Orlandi in 1951. He had been born in 1924 in Avezzano, Italy. She stated in one interview that she proposed to him and he accepted after several months. They married in the Autumn of 1951. In their first few years of marriage, Alice went on-the-road in ''New Faces'' and was gone for six months. (Note: Sources do not agree exactly on how many months she was gone, six to nine certainly.) Some sources in error will state that Alice and Felice married in 1953. This is probably based on a bad reading on one of several early interviews which Alice gave. However, the clear indication of their marriage year, is the interview in 1988 stating "the couple will this Autumn celebrate their thirty-seventh anniversary". Alice and Felice appeared together in a show called "All In One" in 1955, although in different bits. She got to sing opera in one bit, and Felice played in Tennessee William's one-actor "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" in another bit in the same show.</td><td>http://www.findagrave.com/photoThumbnails/photos/2006/71/7489936_114223478208.jpg Felice Orlandi</td></tr></table> On Broadway, Alice had parts in 1956's "Shangri-La" a musical. Also and again on Broadway but in an as-yet-unknown-year in "Maybe Tuesday" a comedy. In March 1957 she appeared in the live show "Cinderella", as one of the ugly stepsisters with Kaye Ballard playing the other one, and with Julie Andrews as Cinderella. Watch the "Making of Cinderella" on YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEs8Bz801NA Part 1], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9zbXuTBA-U Part 2], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhEl93xPtKk Part 3], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT48hmNUnqE Part 4]. Note: Alice does not appear in this documentary, but there are long talking-head segments with both Julie and Kaye. Her off-Broadway experience included her role in 1957 as Tom Sawyer's Aunt Polly in ''Livin The Life''. And also a role in a production "Sand Hog" in an undetermined year. On television she played in "Twelfth Night," with Maurice Evans, and also in "The Show-Off". She appeared on the Jack Parr show in 1958/9 and performed for many years in Greenwich Village's Bon Soi, the Blue Angel, and other New York nighteries. She also did a stint of summer stock in New England. In 1960 she appeared in ''The Thurber Carnival'', a revue based on the humorist's writings. In 1961 she appeared with Art Carney in an NBC "Show of the Week" called "Fads and Foibles". In the 1962 film ''To Kill a Mockingbird'', she played Stephanie Crawford the fussy aunt of Dill Harris, and later in 1962 she played on-stage in S.J. Perelman's fantasy ''The Beauty Part'' with [[Bert Lahr]], for which she received a Tony nomination. "For three seasons of ''The Jackie Gleason Show'', from 1962 to 1964, Ghostley and Gleason regularly played Agnes and Arthur, two lovelorn residents of a tenement." (''The Independent'') Watch one episode [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhfWqJPei4A here] on YouTube.
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