Totie Fields

Totie Fields, born Sophie Feldman, worked her way from Boston nightclubs while still in high school to a national television career after Ed Sullivan spotted her at the Copacabana in 1964, becoming a fixture on his show, The Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares. After a 1976 leg amputation and a string of other health crises, she kept performing and built the material directly into her act rather than around it, and was named Entertainer of the Year by the American Guild of Variety Artists shortly before her death in 1978.