November 18th would have been the 99th birthday of legendary actress/comedienne Imogene Coca.  Probably best known to younger audiences as the crabby Aunt Edna in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation, Coca achieved her greatest fame in the early days of live television with her spectacularly successful teaming with comedian Sid Caesar.  A multi-talented show business veteran from childhood, Coca was a classic clown, a delicate and attractive woman who would–and could–do anything for a laugh.

Imogene was born into showbiz; her mother was a dancer and magician’s assistant and her father was an orchestra conductor.  Born and raised in Philadelphia, Coca’s natural performing talents were honed through dance, piano and voice lessons, and she got her first paying singer job when she was just thirteen.  At fifteen she moved to New York to pursue her career, and soon got a job dancing at the Silver Slipper night club owned by Jimmy Durante.  At seventeen she made her Broadway musical debut in the chorus of a Jeanette MacDonald show, but up until this time Coca was a singer and dancer, and not yet known for her comedic skills. 

Her comedy chops came to light a few years later while co-starring in the "New Faces of 1934"–a too-chilly theater prompted Coca to don an oversized overcoat during rehearsals, and her subsequent antics and natural clowning abilities bubbled to the surface, and a comedienne was born.  She honed her musical comedy skills during many seasons at theatrical producer Max Liebman’s Catskills resort Tamiment, where she worked alongside a young Danny Kaye and his composer wife Sylvia Fine.  Imogene and Danny made it to Broadway together in Liebman’s “Straw Hat Revue” as well as co-starring in a comedy two-reeler, and she also starred in her own short titled Bashful Ballerina. 

Her association with Liebman also led to her biggest triumph, her job as Sid Caesar’s co-star on TV’s Your Show of Shows in the early 1950s.  Sid and Imogene were the toast of the new medium.  The petite and attractive Coca knew that she could get more laughs by downplaying her good looks, and so she became a master at a kind of knockabout comedy that had audiences and critics equally charmed.  She and Caesar were especially hilarious (and poignant, too) as the battling married couple the Hickenloopers, as well as many other characters they would create together.  After the four year run of Your Show of Shows ended in 1954, Imogene went on to guest star on musical, comedy and dramatic TV programs, as well as having her own eponymous show soon after YSoS left the air.  She was a frequent name on stage as well, often co-starring with her second husband King Donovan, whom she met while touring.  (Donovan was a show biz vet, forever beloved by science fiction aficionados for his role as the friend of Kevin McCarthy in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.) 

Aging baby-boomers might recall her short but memorable run–probably mostly due to an inordinately catchy theme song–in the CBS sitcom It’s About Time, as well as her own short-lived series Grindl.  While movies weren’t her primary focus, Imogene Coca appeared in many throughout the years, including Under the Yum Yum Tree, Rabbit Test, Nothing Lasts Forever, and of course National Lampoon’s Vacation.  She also had a tremendous triumph with her Tony-nominated role in 1978’s smash Broadway musical comedy "On The Twentieth Century," based on the 1934 screwball comedy film Twentieth Century starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard. 

Often cited by contemporary female comedians as a role model and inspiration, Imogene Coca’s varied career spanned the decades and she was deeply mourned when she died on June 2, 2001.  There are some compilations of her work with Sid Caesar out on DVD, and students of comedy would be well served to revisit them.  Certainly styles and tastes in comedy change, but artistry is forever, and Imogene Coca is, too.