Biography
Bruce Vilanch is an American comedian, songwriter, and actor. He has won two Emmy awards most known for his four-year career as a celebrity contestant on Hollywood Squares; behind the scenes, he served as the show’s head writer.
Age
She is 75 years old as of 23 November 2023. She was born in 1948 in New York, New York, United States. Her real name Bruce Gerald Vilanch.
Family – Education
Vilanch was born in New York City and raised in Paterson, New Jersey. He graduated from Eastside High School. When he was four days old, he was adopted by optometrist Jonas Vilanch and his wife Henne, a homemaker. Vilanch’s mother, who had her own theatrical ambitions, helped launch her son’s show business career by signing him up with Lane Bryant’s Charming Chub division as a chubby child model.
Vilanch graduated from high school and went on to Ohio State University to study theater and media. While there, he participated in student theater plays and wrote reviews, expecting that this might pave the way for a career as a playwright. Vilanch is Jewish and attended Hebrew school. He was a member of United Synagogue Youth and had a bar mitzvah ceremony.
Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $6 million.
Book
Vilanch co-wrote the book for Platinum, a musical that ran briefly on Broadway in 1978. He has also contributed to concerts featuring Michael Feinstein, Bette Midler, and Diana Ross.
Documentaries
The documentary Get Bruce, released in 1999, focused on Vilanch. The film, which featured interviews with Bette Midler, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg, grossed $43,000 in the domestic market. The documentary also featured Vilanch’s mother, whom he credits with helping him develop his sense of humor.
Vilanch appeared in the documentary Laughing Matters…The Men, also known as Laughing Matters: Gay Comedy in America (2007), together with Alec Mapa, Bob Smith, Scott Kennedy, Andre Kelley, and Eddie Sarfaty. He appears as a pundit in Christopher Hines’ 2010 documentary The Adonis Factor, which explores gay male body perception.
RuPaul’s Drag
Vilanch participated as a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race 3 while costumed as Santa Claus. On RuPaul’s Drag Race 5, he served as a coach for the participants in a comedy roast of RuPaul. He was a guest judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race 6 (2014) in a stand-up comedy competition (“Drag Queens of Comedy”).
Career
Vilanch’s profession in media outlets started with composing highlights for the Chicago Tribune. As an amusement essayist, he started investing energy with however many VIPs as would let him. It was the means by which he met then-battling club artist Bette Midler. Becoming companions, Vilanch later composed satire material for Midler’s 1974 Broadway show Mollusks on the Half Shell and co-composed Divine Frenzy for her in 1980.
Following a transition to Los Angeles, Vilanch was a co-essayist for The Donny and Marie Show, The Paul Lynde Halloween Exceptional, 1978’s adversely gotten Star Wars Occasion Unique, and the fleeting Brady Pack Assortment Hour. After dropping of the Brady Bundle show, he proceeded to compose jokes for Lily Tomlin, Billy Precious stone, Roseanne Barr, Rosie O’Donnell, Paul Reiser, Lady Elizabeth Taylor, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, and Robin Williams.
The night prior to the last transmission of Johnny Carson’s The This evening Show, Bette Midler entertained Carson with “You Made Me Watch You”, to the tune of “You Made Me Love You (I Would have rather not Gotten it done)”, with verses composed by Vilanch, the goodbye melody later winning an Emmy grant. For a very long time, Vilanch was head essayist and VIP square on Hollywood Squares, close to companion and client Whoopi Goldberg. Beginning around 1980, Vilanch has been a journalist and reporter for The Backer, composing both comical and serious pieces. Bruce!: My Experiences in the Skin Exchange and Different Papers, a 2000 assortment of his works, was selected for a Lambda Scholarly Honor.
While requesting that he compose material for one of her show visits, Barbra Streisand offered what Vilanch felt was a “strangely low” wage. Vilanch declined her proposition. She later requested that he compose for one of her impending Las Vegas appearances.
Vilanch co-composed the book for the melodic Platinum, which momentarily played on Broadway in 1978. He has likewise added to show shows featuring Michael Feinstein, Bette Midler and Diana Ross.
As a lyricist, Vilanch co-expressed “Where Is My Man” with performers Fred Zarr and Jacques Morali. The tune was promoted by artist/entertainer Eartha Kitt in 1983. Likewise with Zarr and Morali, Vilanch co-expressed “Sex Via Telephone,” a minor hit for the Town Nation that later turned into a faction #1.
In 2008, Vilanch co-composed The Showgirl Should Happen with Midler. The show opened at Caesars Royal residence in Las Vegas, getting positive audits. Stage and screen veteran Florence Henderson and Vilanch joined for A Night with Companions in 2010. The show highlighted Henderson sharing melodies and stories from her profession in front of an audience, screen, and TV. Vilanch had a longstanding companionship with Henderson, composing for her one-lady show as well as a few of The Brady Pack Assortment Hour episodes in the mid 1980s.
Vilanch composed for the Institute Grants from 1989 to 2014, giving effective joke material to the show’s hosts. During the 1990s, Vilanch worked together with has Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, and Billy Precious stone. He became head author in 2000, serving until 2014.
Among Vilanch’s obligations as Oscar essayist were concocting extra jokes for the host in view of startling occasions that have happened during the broadcast. Most notably, at the 1992 service he thought of a progression of jokes that have Billy Precious stone told over the course of the night following 73-year-old Jack Palance (Gem’s City Slickers co-star) did one-outfitted push-ups during his Best Supporting Entertainer acknowledgment discourse. In a 2010 Vanity Fair meeting, Vilanch was requested whom he composed the Oscars show jokes.
Vilanch’s most memorable TV appearance as himself was in 1988, when he was consulted by Chris Aable, the host and maker of the link show Hollywood Today. He played himself in a 2001 episode of The Simpsons named “Pokey Mother”. Vilanch showed up in the third time of Big name Fit Club in 2006, shedding 21 pounds throughout the span of the show. In April 2008, Vilanch shot a business that parodies Kobe Bryant’s leap over an Aston Martin. In his video, Vilanch is occupied, doesn’t hop, and is run over by a semi truck.
He played himself in the 2008 film, You Don’t Screw with the Zohan and in Walk a Mile in My Pradas, a 2011 American gay body-exchanging rom-com film. Then in 2012, he played Lead representative Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Tatyana Ali”, an episode of The Eric Andre Show, on Animation Organization’s late evening programming block Grown-up Swim.
In 2012, he showed up in season 4 episode 9 of Shark Tank. In 2015, Vilanch played himself in a visitor voice job on the Disney XD vivified series Penn Zero: Parttime Legend. In 2022, he voiced two jobs in the compilation sound show series, Around the Sun.