Draft:Jill Kraft



Jill Kraft (Sept. 30, 1930 — June 25, 1970) was an actress known for her roles on Broadway, in television and film: as Debbie Hirsch in Gertrude Berg’s Dear Me The Sky is Falling and subsequent How To Be a Jewish Mother comedy album, Audrey Hepburn’s understudy in Gigi, and starring as Amelia in Fay Kanin's Broadway play Goodbye My Fancy.

Kraft was born to blacklisted screenwriter/playwright Hy Kraft who wrote Top Banana, Cafe Crown, and Stormy Weather, and Reata Lautterstein, interior decorator and costume designer for Three Husbands from 1950. Kraft attended Beverly Hills High School and went straight into Broadway, performing in the 1950s in Goodbye My Fancy, Gigi, Time Out For Ginger (both as an understudy), and Cyrano de Bergerac. Her biggest role was as Debbie Hirsch in Dear Me, The Sky is Falling and as Berg's daughter in How to Be A Jewish Mother from 1963, both of which contributed to the cultural caricature of the doting and overbearing Jewish mother.

Kraft had a prolific television career--in 1955, Kraft starred as Janet Spelding in Gore Vidal’s original Visit to a Small Planet for Goodyear Television Playhouse. Kraft's role in the first appearance of the play as the ingenue daughter contributed to Visit to a Small Planet and its astute allegory for McCarthyism. Kraft appeared on nearly every single popular television playhouse: Starlight, Goodyear, Ponds Theater, Studio One, Colgate Comedy Hour, The Man Behind the Badge, The Red Button Show, and many others. Kraft made cameos in three 1950s Hollywood movies: Three Husbands, Take Care of My Little Girl, and Goodbye My Fancy--along with providing voiceover for Bridgette Bardot's role in Une Parisienne.

Kraft died of cancer in 1970, leaving her parents Hy and Reata, daughter Lucy Herman (Moog), and husband Leonard Herman.