Portia Nelson was best known for her appearances in 1950s cabarets, where she sang soprano.
26 Facts About Portia Nelson
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In 1965, she portrayed the cantankerous Sister Berthe in the film version of The Sound of Music; she had a minor role as Sarah in the musical Doctor Dolittle; on TV's All My Children Nelson played the long-running role of nanny Mrs Gurney.
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Portia Nelson was born in Brigham City, Utah on May 27,1920.
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Back home in Los Angeles in early 1946, Portia Nelson worked briefly as secretary to film director Andre de Toth; she held another secretarial job in the publicity department of United Artists Pictures.
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Portia Nelson was known for occasionally sitting at pianos on the lot and demonstrating songs, and word of her vocal talents spread.
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Jane Russell was then on the lot making a film, Young Widow; one day they talked about songs they both liked, and Portia Nelson performed one at the piano.
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In January 1950, Portia Nelson moved to New York; soon after she was performing on one of the Blue Angel's four-act bills.
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Portia Nelson would sing there on and off until 1959, sharing rosters with Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey, Imogene Coca, Orson Bean, Wally Cox, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Mathis, and other budding stars.
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Portia Nelson sometimes performed in the front lounge, where her accompanist was William Roy, a young pianist and composer who was just beginning a fifty-year career as a musical director for many of cabaret's greatest performers.
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In 1951 Portia Nelson would appear at the New York lounge Celeste, accompanied by songwriter and pianist Bart Howard, who soon became the emcee at the Blue Angel.
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Portia Nelson championed Howard for the rest of her career.
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Portia Nelson was a frequent participant in a series of recorded re-creations of classic musicals, produced by Columbia president and producer Goddard Lieberson.
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In 1954, Portia Nelson originated the role of Miss Minerva Oliver in The Golden Apple, John Latouche's musical adaptation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
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Portia Nelson continued to sing at the Blue Angel and other cabarets, including New York's Bon Soir and Downstairs at the Upstairs, the Colony in London, and Bricktop's in Rome.
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Portia Nelson became an actress who specialized, inadvertently, in roles of nuns.
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Portia Nelson appeared in the movie Doctor Dolittle and worked as consulting producer and writer for the 1969 TV special, Debbie Reynolds and the Sound of Children.
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In honor of Portia Nelson's repeated castings as a nun, the gallery hosted an exhibition of nun paintings by Portia Nelson and other artists.
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When her friend Rock Hudson was preparing to record his first and only album, Rock, Gently: Rock Hudson Sings the Songs of Rod McKuen in 1970, Portia Nelson coached the actor vocally.
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From May through November 1976, Portia Nelson played the small role of Therese, a spinster, in the touring company of The Baker's Wife, a musical by Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein.
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Portia Nelson continued to act, taking on roles in the soap operas The Doctors and All My Children and appearing on numerous TV commercials.
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Portia Nelson was seen on an episode of the sitcom Chico and the Man and in the movie Can't Stop the Music, which starred the Village People.
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Portia Nelson was a cancer survivor, having conquered breast cancer after a mastectomy in 1973.
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Portia Nelson turned the book into an off-Broadway musical, presented at the York Theatre in Manhattan.
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On January 20,1993, at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, the mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, a close friend of hers, sang the song that would become Portia Nelson's trademark, "Make a Rainbow".
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Portia Nelson had written it in the 1960s and dedicated it to Horne's biracial daughter Angela.
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At her request, Portia Nelson's ashes were spread by friends and family at the Kolob Canyons in Utah's Zion National Park, one of her favorite childhood recreational spots.