Madeline Lee Gilford, an actress and producer who was married to actor Jack Gilford for 40 years, died Monday April 14 in her Greenwich Village apartment at the age of 84.
Actress Madeline Lee met Jack Gilford at a political meeting in 1947. Both were already committed to civil rights issues — a fact that would later come back to hurt them during the McCarthy era. There were married in 1949, until Jack Gilford's death in 1990. She is survived by their three children, Lisa, Joseph and Sam, as well as Molly, Max and Jake, her grandchildren.
Mrs. Gilford's parents were both active socialists. Born in the Bronx in 1923, she was a child actress beginning at the age of three. She performed on radio and shared the stage with Ethel Barrymore in the 1944 play Embezzled Heaven. She also assisted lyricist E.Y. (Yip) Harburg on many productions, including the musical Jamaica.
Both Gilfords were blacklisted for much of the 1950s. Mrs. Gilford's name was one of the names mentioned by Jerome Robbins in his testimony before the HUAC. Thereafter, the couple had difficulty finding work. They relied on loans from friends and government checks for much of their income.
In the 1980s, she turned to producing on Broadway. She co-produced the play The World of Sholom Aleichim, starring her husband, and the musical Rags.
She co-authored a memoir with Kate Mostel (Zero Mostel's wife), 170 Years in Show Business. It chronicled the lives of the two couples, who were friendly with one another; Jack and Zero appeared on stage several times.
Mrs. Gilford remained busy throughout her last decades, playing roles on TV in "Law & Order" and in films such as "The Old Feeling," "Cocoon: The Return," "The Savages" and the yet-to-be-released "Uncertainty" and "Sex and the City."
