Comedienne Beverly Wines, who went by the single stage name of Pudgy, was found dead of natural causes in her Las Vegas home the day before Christmas. Often described as a cross between Don Rickles and Totie Fields, Pudgy (which was usually written out as Pudgy!, with the exclamation point) got her start waiting tables in her native Chicago. She was a funny, acerbic waitress and more than a few patrons told her she belonged on the stage. She thought so, too…and wound up there, becoming a regular in Chicago night spots, especially the Pump Room.
Her career was intermittent, reportedly by choice. She valued raising a family more than stardom and only accepted performing gigs when she thought they wouldn't interfere. Sometimes, they were Vegas jobs and in 1993, when her kids were old enough, she moved to that town and began a string of long-term engagements, usually as emcee of hotel burlesque revues. I saw her when she hosted Crazy Girls, an otherwise unimpressive girlie show at the Riviera. Audiences came for the promise of nearly-naked women but they wound up clapping the hardest for the mistress of ceremonies who insulted them relentlessly when she wasn't mocking her own chubby appearance. She was fast and she was funny and an amazing percentage of her stream of conscious invective seemed to be ad-libbed on the spot.
I met her after the show and we wound up sitting in the lounge, talking over beverages, until she had to get back for the next performance. She said that it was a constant challenge — two shows nightly, three on weekends — to "win over" an audience that didn't come to see a fully-clad fat lady. She said that about half the time, someone in the audience would yell, "Put it on!" The joke didn't bother her but "they're always so smug, like they were the first person to ever think of that. Sometimes, they aren't even the first person that night to yell it out." At the performance I caught, she left the audience wishing there'd been a little less of the naked women with the bad implants and more of the fully-clad fat lady.
Wish I could remember some of her lines to quote here. Most of them were funnier for their speed and attitude than for anything else so maybe they wouldn't translate. But I do remember thinking she deserved to work much bigger venues than the Crazy Girls Theater at the Riviera.