ALICE GHOSTLEY (1926-2007)
Veteran actress played roles on Bewitched, Designing Women
link.

[I didn't think of her as a singer, but it seems she had good musical credits. Her Broadway debut was in a musical comedy.]

LOS ANGELES -- Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning comedic actress and singer who specialized in playing ditsy ladies and was best-known on television for her supporting roles as Esmeralda on Bewitched and Bernice on Designing Women, died Friday. She was 81.

Ms. Ghostley died at her home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, said Jim Pinkston, a longtime friend.

She made her Broadway debut in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952, the hit revue in which she received critical acclaim for singing the satirical sendup The Boston Beguine, which became her signature song.

Ms. Ghostley won the Tony Award for best featured actress in a play in 1965 for The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

On Bewitched, she played the timid good witch and housekeeper Esmeralda from 1969 to 1972.

And from 1987 to 1993, she played Bernice Clifton on Designing Women, a role that earned her an Emmy nomination for supporting actress in a comedy in 1992.

Among Ms. Ghostley's film credits are To Kill a Mockingbird [didn't she play "Aunt Rachel?], The Graduate, Gator and Grease.

She was born Aug. 14, 1926, in the train station in Eve, Mo., where her father worked as a telegraph operator, and she grew up in Henryetta, Okla.

Ms. Ghostley, whose husband, the actor Felice Orlandi, died in 2003, is survived by her sister.