Feminine and funny, Rita Rudner brought something new to stand-up comedy; poise, charm and grace. Her attractive appearance was in comic contrast to her jokes, many influenced by Woody Allen and Steven Wright. Using a deceptively straightforward, sweet voiced delivery, she fried minds with odd concepts (“chopsticks with velcro on the bottom”) and a catalog of strange things that happened to her: “One of my first office jobs was cleaning the windows on the envelopes.”

Blinking her large, luminous eyes, she sometimes chose jokes that seemed to fit within the “ditsy” stereotype, but usually they evidence more wit than ditz: “They caution pregnant women not to drink alcohol. It may harm the baby. I think that’s ironic. If it wasn’t for alcohol most women wouldn’t be that way.”

Quiet but firm on stage, Rudner was a change from the Totie Fields/Joan Rivers school of raucous aggression or tough Elayne Boosler feminism. Rita recalled that it took time to get over that barrier. “In 1984, I played Atlantic City. I might as well have been from Mars. I’d get on stage, and they were used to seeing very loud women, who were either screaming, or fat. I could hear a collective ‘What is this?’ So I bought a real sparkly dress, so at least if they didn’t understand the jokes they’d understand the dress.”

Despite her reputation as “educated Rita,” purveyor of intelligent, well constructed jokes, she said she did not to well at school. She was a professional dancer: “I graduated when I was 15, but, I stayed out of school a lot because I was in shows, and my Dad wrote in that I was sick. Because I was a dancer it was painful for me to have to sit all day. And college? No, I didn’t even want to hear about it.” The Miami-born dancer was in the touring company of “Zorba” plus Broadway shows “Mack and Mabel,” “The Magic Show,” Follies” and “Promises Promises.”

After playing Lillie St. Regis in Broadway’s “Annie” Rudner began performing comedy at New York clubs. She figured it was better to write and perform her own material than wait for a playwright, a theater, and audition calls. She recalled, “Everything was funny…in between the jokes I was telling! People were laughing at me, and none of it had to do with the jokes I’d written. But right away I liked it. Then I tried to figure out what was funny…why would anyone laugh once I stop talking?” She learned, “you could have the most brilliant jokes but if the audience doesn’t like you, it doesn’t work.” She worked hard: “I work at comedy, but I’ve always been very disciplined. Having been a ballerina, that’s the most diciplined life you can lead, so this is nothing!”

Her ballerina abilities helped her stand her ground on stage, holding her head up, radiating a kind of fluorescent brilliance both bright and cool. The coolness was actually shyness, which audiences seemed to understand. They could sense the vulnerability behind her wide eyed stare of amazement.

Rudner won over audiences on “Late Night with David Letterman,” “The Tonight Show,” HBO’s “Ladies of the Night” and TV’s “Funny People” series, ultimately getting her own Ace-Award nominated HBO specials. In 1990 she starred in a six-part British comedy series on the BBC. Though married in 1989, many of her best jokes remained on familiar subjects like dating, which young comedy clubgoers can relate to: “You know how I end relationships…if I never want to see a man again, I just say: ‘I love you…I want to marry you…I want to have your children. Sometimes they leave skid marks.”

Steve Martin once noted, “Comedy is not pretty.” But that was before Rita Rudner. Rudner fascinated critics who would either point out her beauty, or her comic talent. But the biggest compliment, she said, was when they realized the two terms are not mutually exclusive: “how about..attractive and funny?”