'FROM BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD' Panel Centers on Madeline Kahn at Barnes & Noble in LA Tonight

Two-time Oscar nominee Madeline Kahn is the subject of a panel discussion, From Broadway to Hollywood ~ A Chat with her Friends, at Barnes & Noble at The Grove at Farmers Market tonight, February 10, at 7pm. William V. Madison, author of MADELINE KAHN: Being the Music • A Life, will join several of Kahn's friends & colleagues for this first West Coast event for Kahn's biography, published by the University Press of Mississippi. Author Eddie Shapiro (Nothing Like A Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater) will moderate.

Confirmed participants include Robert Allan Ackerman, who directed Kahn in a musical adaptation of Kafka's Amerika & in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit at Santa Fe Festival Theater in 1982-83; Maris Clement, a member of the ensemble of On the Twentieth Century, the 1978 Broadway musical that nearly wrecked Kahn's career (yet earned her a Tony nomination); Julie Dretzin, a co-star of Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig, for which Kahn received the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1993; Michael Karm, a co-star of the Broadway musical Two by Two & also Kahn's acting coach for her first film roles, including her Oscar-nominated turn in Paper Moon; J.D. Lobue, director of every episode of the sitcom "Oh Madeline," Kahn's first foray into series television.

Best known for her Oscar-nominated roles in the smash hits Paper Moon and Blazing Saddles, MADELINE KAHN was, according the author William V. Madison, "one of the most popular comedians of her time - and one of the least understood." A trained opera singer & frustrated dramatic actress, Kahn worked with everyone from Leonard Bernstein to the Muppets over the course of her career. She also starred in four TV series & was nominated for the Tony Award three times, before winning on her fourth nomination, for Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig. She died of ovarian cancer in 1999.

WILLIAM V. MADISON is a former producer at CBS News & a former Associate Editor of Opera News. He was also the lone production assistant on the Broadway musical Rags in 1986. A native Texan, Madison is a graduate of Brown University & the Creative Writing Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Following the panel discussion, MADELINE KAHN: Being the Music • A Life will be available for purchase & signing.

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