Elaine Stritch’s Final Secret

On Monday, le tout Broadway will assemble at the Hirschfeld Theater to pay tribute to Elaine Stritch, who died in July at 89. A new interview with Chiemi Karasawa, the director of the recent documentary “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” tells me something I didn’t know. Elaine moved back to her native Michigan the year before her death not just to be with family but also to have surgery for stomach cancer. She wanted to recuperate in peace. But she found the locals so boring she started drinking two cocktails a day instead of one: tranquility was never what made Stritch tick.

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