During her seven decades as an actor and singer, Elaine Stritch, who has died aged 89, became indelibly associated with three songs written by her favourite collaborator, Stephen Sondheim. These numbers all featured in the Tony award-winning autobiographical one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty (2001), which she performed to great acclaim in the US and the UK. Each lyric captured key aspects of her career and personality.
I'm Still Here, from Sondheim's 1971 musical Follies, was the defiant anthem of a showbiz trouper who had survived professional failures, private crises and changing fashions to remain in demand into old age. Although originally written for a character whom Stritch never played in a full theatrical version, Sondheim's lines about the progress of an acting career "First, you're another / sloe-eyed vamp / Then someone's mother / Then you're camp / Then you career from career to career" came increasingly to embody Stritch's extraordinary durability and perseverance.
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