Madeline Gail Kahn was born in Boston in 1942. In 1948, she was sent to the progressive Manumit School, a boarding school in Bristol, Pennsylvania. During that time, her mother pursued her acting dream. Kahn soon began acting herself, and performed in a number of school productions. In 1960, she graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, New York, and then earned a drama scholarship to Hofstra University on Long Island. At Hofstra, she studied drama, music, and speech therapy. Kahn graduated from Hofstra in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy.
Kahn’s film debut was in the 1968 short De Duva (The Dove). Her feature debut was in the screwball comedy What’s Up Doc? (1972) starring Barabra Streisand. Her film career continued with Paper Moon (1973), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
A close succession of comedies — Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), and High Anxiety (1977) — were all directed by Mel Brooks, who was able to bring out the best of Kahn’s comic talents. For Blazing Saddles, she was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the April 2006 issue of Premiere magazine, her performance as Lili von Schtüpp in Blazing Saddles was selected as number 74 on its list of the 100 greatest performances of all time.
Her role in Young Frankenstein saw her participate in one of the all time great screen jokes, alongside her fellow actors, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Teri Garr.
In 1978, Kahn’s comic screen persona reached another peak with Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective (1978), a spoof of both Casablanca and the Maltese Falcon. In 1987, Kahn won a Daytime Emmy for her performance in the ABC Afterschool Special, Wanted: The Perfect Guy. Kahn returned to the stage in the Billie Dawn role in the 1989 Broadway revival of Born Yesterday and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Finally he she is performing “You’d be Surprised!” by Irving Berlin on Irving Berlin’s 100th Birthday Celebration, 1988.
