The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 334

That lady with Steve Lawrence is not his wife, Eydie Gorme; instead, it's Marilyn Michaels imitating Eydie on a recent Kopylcats show. Above, George Ktrby with Marilyn as Mr. and Mrs. Archie Bunker in a spoof of All in the Family. 1 i Marilyn Michaels Mimics the Stars And Becomes One HARRY HARRIS Screening TV cantor, as were both her paternal and maternal grandfathers.

"I started in show business as "The surprised. None of them had done that before." Now she's one of the few deft distaff impressionists, along with Debbie Reynolds, i Adams and Sheilah MacRae, and the only member of the quartet who regularly essays guys as well as gals. She's most often associated with an amazingly verisimilitudinous version of Barbra Streisand. She not only manages to look and sound like a two-inches-shorter Barbra, but six years ago she played Barbra's starring role in the touring company of "Funny Girl." "I wasn't playing Barbra," Marilyn says. "We were both playing Fanny Brice.

"I love, adore, admire Barbra, but I think my Judy Garland is just as strong. I've heard that Barbra has said, 'She does Judy Garland "Barbra's the only one I know who has never told me how she feels about continued on page 38 Excuse the name-dropping, but the other day I chatted with Barbra Streisand, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Dinah Shore and Eartha Kitt. Among others. And then she said She, singular. The singular Marilyn Michaels, only Kopykitten in ABC's The Kopykats, which will be airing another of its virtually every-other-week celebrity-simulating sessions Wednesday at 8:30 P.M.

(Channel 6). Three nights after this week's dittoing do with fellow impressionists Frank Gorshin, George Kirby and Rich Little, Miss Michaels (nee Marilyn Sternberg, daughter of former Philadelphian Fraydele Oysher) will be celebrating her 29th birthday. She'll also be "coming of age" as a professional performer. It was. 21 years ago, she reports, that she began appearing in vaudeville with her mother.

Her father, Harold Sternberg, is a Metropolitan Opera basso; her late uncle, Moishe Oysher, was a celebrated under kind' I was a very precocious little brat! singing, and I still consider myself primarily a singer-actress. "But my mother is a comedienne, as well as a singer, with a gift for mimicry, though she didn't do definite impressions, and I guess my ability to mimic others comes from her. "You either have that ability to see, hear and reproduce characteristics or you don't. "When I was very little I would listen to the radio and then sing like Patti Page or Teresa Brewer. It must have been quite strange.

My family was THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TV WEEK, FEBRUARY 20, 1972.