Ruth Kobart

Ruth Kobart was an American performer who worked for six decades in opera, Broadway musicals, regional theater, film, and television. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, she studied music in Chicago at the American Conservatory of Music, and she first worked professionally as the Witch in an off-Broadway staging of Hänsel und Gretel. She also sang with the New York City Opera and the NBC Opera Theatre, creating roles for Menotti and Martinů. Her Broadway shows included Pipe Dream, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which brought a 1963 Tony nomination, and Three Sisters. From 1967 through 1994 she acted with San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, leaving in the 1970s to play Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Her films included How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), Petulia (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), and Sister Act (1992), and she had a regular role on Bob and voiced Malicia in King's Quest VII.