Tony winning actress dies at 54

BEVERLY HILLS -- Nell Carter, who played the sassy, matronly housekeeper on the 1980s sitcom "Gimme a Break!" and received a Tony Award in 1978 for her performance in the Broadway musical "Ain't Misbehavin,'" died Thursday, her publicist said. She was 54.\nThe singer-actress collapsed in her Beverly Hills home and was found by one of her 13-year-old sons, spokesman Roger Lane said.\nCarter had suffered from diabetes for years, Lane added, and underwent brain surgery in 1992 to remove an aneurysm. She recovered and continued to perform, mostly on stage.\nCarter was in rehearsals at a Long Beach theater for "Raisin," the musical version of "Raisin in the Sun."\nIn addition to Carter's Tony win for "Ain't Misbehavin,'" she won an Emmy in 1982 for a TV broadcast of the show.\nHer NBC comedy "Gimme a Break!" ran from 1981 to 1987, and garnered two more Emmy nominations, in 1982 and 1983.\nIn 1985, an episode of the show was broadcast live -- the first for a situation comedy in nearly 30 years. Carter and her costars performed flawlessly, and at the end, she threw up her arms and yelled, "We did it!"\nGrowing up in Birmingham, Ala., Carter listened to her mother's recordings of Dinah Washington and B.B. King, and her brother's Elvis Presley records. She liked Doris Day, the Andrews Sisters, Johnny Mathis, and admired the work of Cleo Laine and Barbra Streisand.