A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC star Elaine Stritch featured in the New York Post

NEW YORK POST
November 4, 2010

Where life is suite

By MICKI SIEGEL

The Plaza has Eloise, a fictional little girl who has the run of the hotel. Since the 1930s, the Algonquin has had a series of cats, all named Matilda, in its lobby. But the Carlyle does them one better.

It has Elaine Stritch — a living, breathing icon of the Broadway stage (now co-starring in the Tony Award-winning revival of “A Little Night Music”) — who’s made the historic Upper East Side hotel her own special kingdom.

“I’m a hotel baby,” Stritch, 85, says. “I’ve always lived in hotels, but I’m very picky. I love living at the Carlyle. They spoil me. So I keep getting worse and worse. I get more demanding, I run the show, what I say goes. But I have a feeling that the people here like me.”

Stritch moved into the 1930 Art Deco building at 76th Street and Madison Avenue eight years ago. She settled in a sunny corner room with two windows, a good-sized bathroom and a tiny entrance hall totaling 800 square feet. She filled it with a king-sized bed, a small fridge, a desk, a table and chairs, an antique washstand and coffee table from her former home in Sag Harbor (which she sold in 2001) and tables topped with photos of her friends and family. There’s also several vases filled with flowers (the hotel staff regularly replenishes them).

“I don’t want possessions anymore,” Stritch says. “I don’t want to go from one room to another. One of the great thing about hotel living is that less is more.”

Click here to read the full article from the New York Post.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, directed by Tony Award^®-winner Trevor Nunn, is now playing on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre (219 West 48th Street) through January 9, 2011.