In 1987, HBO had a comedy special called Women of the Night. It featured four women who were known regionally and at certain comedy clubs, but had yet to really reach a national audience. They were Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Poundstone, Rita Rudner, and today’s guest Judy Tenuta. In fact, for the next four years each one of these women would be named Best Female Stand-up Comic at the American Comedy Awards, with Tenuta being the first in 1988.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s Judy was a part of a big boom for women in comedy. She branded herself as The Love Goddess and starred in national commercials, published her first book, and received Grammy nominations for her comedy albums. If you’ve seen the movie Waiting for Guffman, one of my all-time favorite films, you’ll notice a certain Judy Tenuta T-shirt worn by Corky St. Clair.
However, her introduction to the stage was when she majored in theater in college. In this interview we’ll talk about Judy Tenuta's transition from plays and musicals to stand-up comedy, her long-standing connection with the LGBTQ community, and the cancer diagnosis she received during the height of the Covid pandemic. As the Aphrodite of the Accordion, though, she hasn’t let that stop her, releasing a a music video called “Kicking Cancer’s Ass" on New Year’s Eve that is in perfect keeping with her campy and offbeat persona that has made her one of the most unique comedians and performers of her generation.
NOTE: Tenuta passed away on October 6, 2022 at her home in Los Angeles after a long battle against ovarian cancer.
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Why I’ll Never Make It is an award-winning, Top Theater Podcast hosted by actor and singer Patrick Oliver Jones and is a production of WINMI Media. Background music is by John Bartmann and Blue Dot Sessions is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.