"Laughter is a strange response," funnylady of the highest and hottest order Madeline Kahn once quipped. "I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction. It's very complex." If that sounds like Madeline Kahn could also be describing the phenomenon of orgasms, that's likely because this mouth-watering, mirth-making master of all comedic media has made so many of us crack up and get off alike with her electrifyingly amusing and erotic combination of ha-ha's and hotness. Madeline Khan may have started her career on the cabaret circuit, but she soon made found a perfect home partaking in big screen high jinks with her feature debut as Ryan O’Neil’s fiancée in Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? (1972). Maddy's next effort, Paper Moon (1973), scored her Oscar nomination number one; she earned her second for her role as sexy Teutonic songbird Lily Von Schtupp in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles (1974). Kooky cut-up Madeline is best known for her roles alongside Gene Wilder and in Mel-Brooks-helmed comedy masterworks such as Young Frankenstein (1974), High Anxiety (1978), and The History of the World – Part 1 (1981). In more recent years, Madeline earned acclaim for her work in films such as A Bug’s Life (1998) and on the TV series Cosby. Sadly, Kahn’s comeback was cut short with her death from ovarian cancer in December 1999, but her sexy, knockout knee-slapping work will live forever.
