‘Guys And Dolls’ Miss Adelaide Dies At 74

Vivian Blaine, who played Miss Adelaide, the long-suffering, perpetually engaged chorus girl, in the Broadway and film versions of “Guys and Dolls,” has died at the age of 74.

Blaine died Saturday at Beth Israel Hospital, where she was being treated for pneumonia, friend Edwin Meyers said Wednesday.

Blaine also starred on Broadway in such shows as “Say, Darling” (1958) and “Enter Laughing” (1963), but it was as Miss Adelaide, the role she originated in the 1950 Frank Loesser musical, that she was best known.

Blaine stopped the show each night with her rendition of “Adelaide’s Lament,” in which the chorine complains about having a bad, bad cold because of her long engagement to gambler Nathan Detroit.

In “Guys and Dolls,” which was her Broadway debut, Blaine also introduced such songs as “A Bushel and a Peck” and “Take Back Your Mink.”