Early Life and Career
Florence Stanley was born as Florence Schwartz in Chicago, the daughter of Hanna (née Weil) and Jack Schwartz. She began a long career on stage, film and TV starting in the 1940s. Her earliest theatrical performances include The Importance of Being Earnest with the Touring Players, Bury The Dead at New York's Cherry Lane Theatre, and Machinal.
During the 1950s, Stanley appeared in numerous live TV shows, and gave an acclaimed performance as Clytemnestra in the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1964 production of Electra, opposite Lee Grant, who played the title role. Stanley began her long career on Broadway as Maureen Stapleton's understudy in a 1965 revival of The Glass Menagerie.
In 1966 she took over the role of Yente in Broadway's Fiddler On The Roof from Beatrice Arthur, leaving in 1971 (after over 2,000 performances) to open in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue, directed by Mike Nichols. In 1972 she went on to tap dance in the Broadway production of The Secret Affairs Of Mildred Wild, and in 1981 went back to work for Neil Simon in the Broadway production of Fools.
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