Rapping granny from Wedding Singer dies at 101

Actress Ellen Albertini Dow, best known for her throw down of “Rapper’s Delight” in the hit film The Wedding Singer, has passed away at the age of 101.

Via Pierce College Theatre’s Facebook page:

Today the LAPC Theatre Department lost the matriarch of its family. It is with great sadness that we report the news that Mrs. Ellen Albertini Dow (the widow of Eugene Dow, founder of the LAPC Theatre Department), passed away this afternoon. She was 101 years old.

Mrs. Dow was also a theatre instructor (primarily teaching children’s and musical theatre) at Pierce College for many years. She directed our original production of “The Fantasticks” in the late 60s, and we honored her with our remounting of the musical in the fall of 2014.

Here’s a brief bio via IMDB:

The multifaceted Ellen Albertini was a student of dance and piano at the age of five, and obtained a B.A. and M.A. in theater from Cornell University. She moved to New York, and studied and worked with the legendary likes of Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Michael Shurtleff, Uta Hagen, Marcel Marceau, and Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She was an acting coach before she made her debut film appearance in American Drive-In (1985), and later became memorable as the rapping grandmother in The Wedding Singer (1998), “Disco Dottie” in 54 (1998) and the homophobic grandmother in Wedding Crashers (2005).

RIP…