Her father, Sigmund Newman, from Warsaw, billed himself as Gabel the Graphologist, working with his wife in boardwalk amusements.

Additional theater credits include Bells Are Ringing, Pleasures and Palaces, The Apple Tree, On the Town, The Prisoner of Second Avenue, Awake and Sing!, Broadway Bound, and Subways Are for Sleeping, for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, beating out Barbra Streisand in I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

[3] Newman played Stella Deems in the 1985 staged concert version of Follies at Avery Fischer Hall in New York.

In June 1979, Newman and Arthur Laurents collaborated on the one-woman show The Madwoman of Central Park West.

Produced by Fritz Holt, it featured songs by Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock, John Kander, Martin Charnin, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Edward Kleban, Fred Ebb, Sheldon Harnick, Peter Allen, Barry Manilow, Carole Bayer Sager, and Stephen Sondheim.

In 1960, she was cast as Doris Hudson on the CBS summer replacement series Diagnosis: Unknown, with Patrick O'Neal as Dr. Daniel Coffee.