Elaine Cancilla Orbach, Actor Jerry Orbach's Widow, Dies at 69
By Robert Simonson
April 2, 2009
Elaine Cancilla Orbach, the widow of actor Jerry Orbach and a former Broadway dancer, has died. She was 69.
According to friends, she got sick with pneumonia in recent days and died in a Manhattan hospital April 1. The two actors met while they were working on the original production of Kander and Ebb's Chicago, where Jerry played lawyer Billy Flynn and Elaine was a replacement for Velma Kelly. They later co-starred in a tour of Neil Simon's Chapter Two and married in 1979.
Prior to that, Elaine Cancilla had appeared in the Broadway productions of Fiorello! How to Succeed..., Here's Love, Flora, the Red Menace, Sweet Charity and Cry for Us All, working many times with choreographer Bob Fosse.
Jerry Orbach died in 2004, and at his memorial people spoke of his extraordinary devotion to his wife, to whom he would write a poem every day.
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| Elaine Cancilla Orbach and Jerry Orbach |
| photo by Aubrey Reuben |