Jack Gilford - Personal Life

Personal Life

Gilford met actress (and later producer) Madeline Lee at progressive political meetings and events during the late 1940s. Gilford entertained at many of these events, some of them produced by Lee. Madeline was married at the time and divorced her first husband soon after meeting Jack. They were married in 1949, remaining together for 40 years until his death in 1990. He and Lee raised three children: Lisa Gilford (from Madeline's previous marriage), now a producer; Joe Gilford, a screenwriter, playwright and director; and Sam Max Gilford, an artist and archivist.

Following a year-long battle with stomach cancer, he died in his Greenwich Village home in 1990, aged 81. His wife, Madeline Lee Gilford, died on April 15, 2008. The Gilfords resided in two apartments in Greenwich Village, one at 75 Bank St., where a young Lauren Bacall once lived, and another at 380 West 12th Street. They are both interred at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York.