Rusty Warren

Bawdy and risque, the comedy of Rusty Warren was daring and revolutionary; one of the few successful female performers in a business historically dominated by men, Warren pushed the envelope further by dealing explicitly with sex, a taboo topic for any mainstream comic of the 1950s and '60s regardless of gender. Born Ilene Goldman in New York in 1931, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts, and after graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in 1952, she became a teacher. On the advice of a boyfriend, Warren spent a summer performing in a piano lounge in upstate...