Singer-actress found success on Broadway

Henrietta Valor, 72, a singer and actress who performed on Broadway in the musicals “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” “Half a Sixpence,” “Applause” and “Annie,” died Friday at her Studio City home from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her husband John Towey said.

Valor moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and appeared in the musical comedy “Fashion” at the Alex Theatre in Glendale and the comedy “Lettice and Lovage” at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1996. In “Fashion” she reprised the role she’d played off-Broadway in 1974.

Born Henrietta Embick in New Cumberland, Pa., on April 28, 1935, she studied music and acting at Northwestern University, earning a bachelor’s in 1957. She also studied opera with Lotte Lehmann at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara in the late 1950s.

In the early 1960s she toured with the USO, performing in Europe, Africa and Asia, providing some of her most enduring memories, her husband said.