Judy Tenuta (1949-2022)
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Judy Tenuta – a one-of-a-kind, brash, quintessentially feminist stand-up comic known as the “Goddess of Love”, “Petite Flower” and “Aphrodite of the Accordion – died at the age of 72 of ovarian cancer. Tenuta deployed a campy brew of insult comedy, physical humor and acerbic wit, lampooning everyone from Yoko Ono and the pope to Southerners, mimes and Vice President Dan Quayle. Sending Quayle to San Francisco to comfort earthquake victims was like “sending Ronald McDonald to Tiananmen Square,” she said.
After the Oak Park IL-native graduated college, Tenuta began studying improv at Second City. In a nod to her Catholic school upbringing, she dressed as the Virgin Mary for her first stand-up show, and could often be found at George’s comedy club on Kinzie, where she would greet audiences with, “Hey, pigs! Let’s party!” She frequently performed at gay bars, acquiring a devoted following in the LGBTQ community, and becoming an advocate for gay rights. Ms. Tenuta began touring the country in the 1980s, and rose to national prominence after performing on “Late Night With David Letterman” and starring in an HBO comedy special, “Women of the Night,” with Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Poundstone, Rita Rudner and Lizz Winstead. She was named the best female comedy club performer at the 1988 American Comedy Awards — the male winner was Jerry Seinfeld — and went on to receive two consecutive Grammy nominations, for her mid-’90s comedy albums “Attention Butt Pirates and Lesbetarians” (recorded at the Los Angeles LGBTQ pride festival) and “In Goddess We Trust.” She appeared onstage in “The Vagina Monologues” in Los Angeles and Chicago, with former “Gilligan’s Island” star Dawn Wells, and acted on-screen, playing a showgirl-turned-marriage officiant on “General Hospital”, in the Hilary Duff teen comedy “Material Girls”, guest-starred on children’s TV shows “Cory in the House” and “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide”, and produced and starred in the independent film, “Desperation Boulevard” (1998). She is the author of 2 books: “The Power of Judyism” and “Full Frontal Tenudity”. During her heyday in the late-1980s golden age of comedy, Tenuta was sometimes carried onstage by a bodybuilder or borne aloft in a thronelike chair, raised on the shoulders of several muscle-bound men. Wearing gold lamé pants or a gauzy floor-length cape, she would introduce herself as “a shy, innocent petite flower” before shouting “Hey pigs, let’s party! You know you’re begging for abuse from the Goddess of Love.” The accordion she made part of her act was “an instrument of love and submission,” as she fondly called it. Even making money when she was cancelled, Tenuta was dropped as a headliner from the 1989 White House correspondents’ dinner, apparently because she was considered too controversial. They still paid her $5,000, she told the media: “It’s like I’m a farmer. They’re paying me not to grow my jokes.” Tenuta grew up in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, where her Catholic school education (she called the school “St Obnoxious in Bondage”) inspired her subversion of traditional gender roles and a self-styled religion called “Judyism.” Ms. Tenuta became the first member of her family to graduate from college, majoring in theater at the University of Illinois Chicago. Tenuta is survived by her life partner, Vern Pang; five brothers; and a sister. |