Rita Rudner

Biography

A house-filling favorite in Las Vegas since she opened as one of the hottest tickets in town in June 2000, Rudner is known for her epigrammatic one-liners. Over the course of a multi-year run she sold almost two million tickets, grossed over a hundred million dollars, and became the longest-running solo female comedy show in the history of Las Vegas. She was named “Las Vegas Comedian of The Year” nine years in a row and in 2006 received “The Nevada Ballet’s Woman Of The Year” award.

In October2017, she was given the “Casino Entertainment Legend Award.” Rita’s first solo HBO special, “Rita Rudner’s One Night Stand,” was nominated for several awards, as was her eponymous English BBC television show that later appeared in the USA on A&E. Rudner’s two one-hour specials for HBO, “Born to Be Mild” and “Married Without Children,” were ratings standouts and she performed all over the country, filling Carnegie Hall in New York three times.

In 2008, Rita Rudner: “Live From Las Vegas,” was PBS’s first ever stand-up comedy special. Rita Rudner has written several books; her bestselling non-fiction titles, Naked Beneath My Clothes, Rita Rudner’s Guide to Men, and Still Have It..I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It, plus the novels Tickled Pink and Turning the Tables. The audio version of Naked Beneath My Clothes received a Grammy nomination. Rudner is a frequent collaborator with her writer/producer husband of 30 years, Martin Bergman. The couple’s first produced film script was Peter’s Friends, the film, starring Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Kenneth Branagh, Imelda Staunton, Stephen Fry, and Rita, which won the “Evening Standard Peter Sellers Award” for Best British Film and was nominated for the “Goya Award” for Best European Film of 1994.The script was nominated for a WGA “Best Screenplay “ award and Rita won “Best Supporting Actress” at the American Comedy Awards.

The couple’s second film project, a TV movie called A Weekend In The Country, starred Rita, Jack Lemmon, Dudley Moore, Richard Lewis, Christine Lahti, Betty White and Faith Ford. Bergman and Rudner’s last film, Thanks, premiered at the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival, and which won several awards on the film festival circuit and was bought by, and frequently aired, on ShowTime.

In 2003, Rudner launched from Las Vegas her first syndicated daily TV show, “Ask Rita,” which featured a panel of celebrities lightheartedly attempting to solve personal problems submitted by members of the public; it ran for two years. For her work on the show, American Women in Radio and Television awarded Rudner a “Gracie Allen” Award for “Best Program Host.” Rita helped write the 2001 and 2003 Oscar shows with Steve Martin and the 2002 Oscar broadcast with Whoopi Goldberg.

Rita Rudner moved to New York at the age of fifteen to become a dancer on Broadway. She appeared in several shows, including the original productions of “Follies” and “Mack and Mabel.” It was while in “Annie” on Broadway that she began exploring the comedy clubs in Manhattan. In the early ‘eighties, Rudner took a full-time leap from chorus lines to punch lines and was soon a regular guest on both “Late Night With David Letterman” and “The Tonight Show.” In 2009, Rita, Bette Midler and Sheryl Crow joined forces to perform a fundraiser for President Obama and the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid. In 2012, Rita and Martin Bergman wrote and performed “The Rita Rudner Show” for BBC radio in London. Rita also appeared in the Showtime comedy special “Rita Rudner and Three Potential Ex-Husbands.” In June 2016, Rita was invited and honored to speak about her career and technique in comedy at Cambridge University, England. In 2017, Oprah Winfrey invited her to appear on a cruise to Alaska that Oprah did in partnership with Holland America. In 2018, Rita’s tenth TV special was released– “A Tale Of Two Dresses.” The special also featured Rita and Martin’s singer/songwriter daughter Molly Bergman. In September 2018, Rita appeared at the Laguna Playhouse in the new musical comedy “Two’s A Crowd.” She and Martin have previously collaborated at the Playhouse on two plays which they-wrote– “Room 776” and “Tickled Pink” –as well as “Act 3...” written by David Ambrose and Claudia Nellens. “Two’s A Crowd” was staged off-Broadway in New York in 2019, and plans were in the works to transfer it to a larger New York theater in 2020 when the Covid pandemic forced those plans to be abandoned.

In 2022, Rita returned to live performances with a series of concerts across the USA. Her memoir My life in Dog Years, was published in December of that year, and in January 2023 she appeared at the Laguna Playhouse in the world premiere of Staged, a new comedy written by Martin Bergman and Rudner. In February, she features as a guest star in an episode of “Magnum P.I.” on NBC.

Martin Bergman, manager and husband of legendary comic, Rita Rudner (right) with the couple's daughter, singer/songwriter, Molly, at Molly's recent college graduation.