Madame Spivy

Bertha Levine, born in Brooklyn in 1906, was an American singer and pianist who performed as Spivy and later became a nightclub proprietor and character actor. She began in speakeasies and clubs as Spivy Le Voe, and by 1936 was a regular act at Tony's on West 52nd Street; in 1939 the New York Times called her satirical material witty, acid and tragicomic. She ran her own club, Spivy's Roof, from 1940 to 1951, and released two 78 rpm albums on which she recited lyrics over piano. After touring Paris, London and Rome, she returned to the United States in 1957 and took supporting film roles, often as matronly or villainous characters, in The Fugitive Kind (1960), All Fall Down (1962), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). She also played Mother Burnside on Broadway in Auntie Mame. Her best-remembered television appearance was a 1959 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode.