introduced the cabaret standard "The Boy From...", written by Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers), and Little Murders (1969). Lavin won the Theatre World Award for Wet Paint and a Drama Desk Award for Little Murders. In 1975, she appeared in the Shakespeare in the Park (New York City) production of The Comedy of Errors at the Delacorte Theater. She "arrived at showbiz stardom with a featured role" in the musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman (1966). She received her first Tony Award nomination in 1970, for her role in the Neil Simon play Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969). Clive Barnes, in his review for The New York Times, wrote: "Linda Lavin, eyebrows, [sic] flaunting like telegraphed messages, mouth twitching and pouting, voice as dry as thunder and with a cough like electric static, is beautiful as Elaine, the sex cat feeling coolly kittenish and looking for a safe tin roof." Lavin's last Broadway credit before she moved to Hollywood was in Paul Sills' Story Theatre in 1971. In 1984, Lavin played the character of "The Mother" in Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in a production directed by Robert Brustein at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After more than a decade away, appearing on television, Lavin returned to the Broadway stage in 1987, winning a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and her second Drama Desk Award for her role as Kate in Simon's play Broadway Bound. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote: "One only wishes that Ms. Lavin, whose touching performance is of the same high integrity as the writing, could stay in the role forever." Theatre critic Charles McNulty wrote of her performance that it "is widely considered one of the most memorable in contemporary Broadway history, winning not just awards but praise approaching the level of myth. The distinguished theater critic Gordon Rogoff, extolling 'the power available only to an actor at the height of her own command of detail,' went so far as to describe Lavin's portrayal as 'one of those textbook lessons in great acting...' " She then starred on Broadway in Gypsy as Mama Rose Hovick, replacing Tyne Daly in July 1990. June Havoc saw Lavin's performance in Gypsy and sent Lavin a photo of Havoc's mother, the real Rose Hovick, with a note of appreciation for Lavin's particular