Charlotte Rae Lubotsky (April 22, 1926 – August 5, 2018) was an American character actress and singer whose career spanned sixty-six years.

Rae was known for her portrayal of Edna Garrett in the sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and its spin-off, The Facts of Life (in which she had the starring role from 1979 to 1986).

Rae's mother, Esther Lubotsky, had been childhood friends with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir.

[2][3] For the first ten years of her life, Rae's family lived in an apartment built for them above her father's Milwaukee tire store.

At Northwestern she met several then unknown stars and producers, including Agnes Nixon, Charlton Heston, Paul Lynde, Gerald Freedman, Claude Akins and songwriter Sheldon Harnick.

In a 2016 interview with Milwaukee Talks, she said about her decision in appearing in only dramatic television: "When I started out, I wanted to be a serious actor, I never thought I'd get into comedy.

[3] In July 1979, Rae proposed the idea for a spinoff based on "The Girls' School" episode from Diff'rent Strokes.

NBC approved the show, to be called The Facts of Life, which would portray a housekeeper turned housemother for boarding students in a prestigious private school.

The program would deal with issues facing teenagers such as weight gain and dieting, depression, drugs, alcohol, and dating.

As a result, it was briefly mentioned in the second-season premiere two-part episode "The New Girl" and in the sixth installment "Shoplifting" that Rae's character of Mrs. Garrett had also gone on a diet and lost weight.

In 1982, Rae received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Edna Garrett in The Facts of Life.

The producers of the show tried to persuade Rae to continue with The Facts of Life for at least another two years, but she felt her time on the program had run its course and decided to leave at the end of the 1985–86 season.

In order to help with the transition, Rae agreed to make her last appearance on the show in the two-part eighth-season premiere "Out of Peekskill".

In that episode, Edna Garrett would marry, leave Peekskill with her new husband (played by Robert Mandan), and they both would move to Africa to work in the Peace Corps.

In 2001, Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Mindy Cohn, and Kim Fields were reunited in a TV movie, The Facts of Life Reunion.

In the 2008 movie You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Rae had a role as an older woman who has a fling with Adam Sandler's character.

The same day, Nancy McKeon and Kim Fields (who played Jo and Tootie, respectively) gave a speech in honor of her 85th birthday.

[11] She appeared in Ben Bagley's revue The Littlest Revue (and on its cast album) in 1956, appearing alongside Joel Grey and Tammy Grimes, among others, and singing songs by Sheldon Harnick ("The Shape of Things"), Vernon Duke ("Summer is a-Comin' In"), and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams ("Spring Doth Let Her Colours Fly"), a parody of opera singer Helen Traubel's Las Vegas night club act, among others.

[12] Rae later recorded Rodgers & Hart Revisited with Dorothy Loudon, Cy Young, and Arthur Siegel, singing "Everybody Loves You (When You Sleep)" and in several other duets and ensembles for Bagley's studio.

[13] In 1973, Rae played the role of Southern Comfort in Terrence McNally's spoof Whiskey at Saint Clements' Theatre Off-Broadway.

[3] In 2009, due to the frequency of pancreatic cancer in her own family, Rae was screened, diagnosed early, and became cancer-free after six months of chemotherapy.