Dinah Manoff (January 25, 1956) is a Tony Award winning actress who appeared as Kathy Cumberland, a gold digger out to entrap Mork in Season 2's Mork's Baby Blues
Biography[]
Dinah Beth Manoff was born in New York City, New York, USA to Academy Award Winning actress, director, and writer Lee Grant, and screenwriter Arnold Manoff, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and was forced to use the name Joel Carpenter, and passed away in 1965 when Dinah was 9 years old Her half-brother, Tom Manoff, is the classical music critic for NPR's All Things Considered and a notable composer. Her stepfather is producer Joseph Feury
She spent her childhood and teenage years in New York City and Malibu, California. She attended the New Lincoln School and Santa Monica High School at latter she confessed to being a self avowed troublemaker, smoking on campus, going barefoot. At aged 19 she was accepted into the prestigious Actors Studio.
Since 1997, Manoff has been married to motivational speaker Arthur Mortell, and currently resides in Bainbridge Island, Washington. She married French designer Jean-Marc Joubert (7 September 1982 - 1987) ( divorced) and had resided in Los Angeles and New York City.
Career[]
Manoff is best known world wide for her role as Marty Maraschino in the film Grease, (landing the role without being able to sing or dance) and and Carol Weston in the Golden Girls spinoff, Empty Nest (opposite friend and mentor Richard Mulligan who played her father).
Manoff's first credit was in the independent film Everybody Rides the Carousel, providing one of the voices. In 1976, she made her first television appearance on the PBS production of The Stronger. This was followed by a guest appearance on Welcome Back, Kotter in the episode "Sadie Hawkins Day", followed by an appearance in Visions. In 1977, she made a cameo appearance in her first TV movie, Raid on Entebbe. In 1978, alongside Grease, Manoff got the role of Elaine Dallas (née Lefkowitz) on the ABC sitcom Soap, where she first met Richard Mulligan, and remained on the show until the end of the year.
1980 was something of a banner year, appearing in the Academy Awards Best Picture of the Year, Ordinary People, and received the Tony Award for Best Actress in for her performance in the Broadway production of Neil Simon's "I Ought To Be In Pictures", a role she reprised in the film version, starring opposite Walter Matthau.
Additional theater credits include Broadway's "Leader of the Pack", "Alfred and Victoria", "Kingdom on Earth" and the Los Angeles stage production of "Love Letters", opposite Patrick Cassidy.
The mid 80s to early 90s saw her 7 year stint on Empty Nest, also appearing as Carol Weston in the Golden Girls and Nurses subsequent TV appearances included Touched by an Angel, Cybill, and George and Leo.
Manoff's other feature film credits include Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989), Child's Play (1988), Backfire (1988), Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990) the Amati Girls (with Mark Harmon).
She's also appeared in the television movies The Cover Girl and the Cop (1989) (aka "Beauty & Denise"), Raid on Entebbe (1976), For Ladies Only (1981), The Seduction of Gina (1984), A Matter of Sex (1984), Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac (1984), the miniseries Celebrity (1984) and the NBC movie-of-the-week Babies (1990), with Lindsay Wagner.
Mork & Mindy[]
In 1979, Manoff appeared as Kathy Cumberland, in Mork's Baby Blues as the gold digging would be actress who mistakenly believes Mork to be wealthy, attempts (and fails) to seduce him, but nonetheless tells everyone Mork included that she is expecting his child, blackmailing him into marrying her, or paying her off, in order to extort his money from him. Things turn on their head however, when, with no money, and a determined sense of duty (and utterly clueless he couldn't be a father), Mork ploughs on with plans to marry her, until to stop herself ending up hitched to a penniless eccentric, Kathy confesses all.