The standard bio on Phyllis Newman lists several points of interest, the second being she once beat Barbra Streisand out of a Tony. Both made their Broadway beachheads the same year and wound up contending for 1962’s best featured actress in a musical award: Ms. Streisand as the hardworking Garment District secretary, Miss Marmelstein, in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” vs. Ms. Newman as the out-of-work Southern belle, Martha Vail, in “Subways Are for Sleeping,” a show her husband, Adolph Green, had written with Betty Comden and Jule Styne. The night of the awards the producer of both, David Merrick, sat next to Ms. Newman and, in his malevolent fashion, leaned over and whispered, “I voted for Barbra” – moments before Ms. Newman’s name popped, ever so sweetly, out of the envelope.

The other top point of interest about her is that – in addition to Streisand – Ms. Newman beat cancer. This is her 20th year as a breast cancer survivor, and she is celebrating with the 10th annual “Nothing Like a Dame” extravaganza for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, benefiting the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative of The Actors’ Fund of America. Curtain is at 8 p.m. tonight at the Marquis Theater.

It’s an all-lady lineup, with a few cross-dressing male Cagelles (from “La Cage aux Folles”) let in on a pass. Alphabetically, that comes out to Kathy Brier, Zoe Caldwell, Kate Clinton, Jennifer Cody, Lea DeLaria, Sandy Duncan, Edie Falco, Sutton Foster, Randi Graff, Ann Harada, Dee Hoty, Leila Josefowicz, Mary Ann Lamb, Nancy Lemanger, Ledisi, Brandi Massey, Maureen McGovern, Dana Moore, Bebe Neuwirth, Rosie O’Donnell, Orfeh, Faith Prince, Lynn Redgrave, Chita Rivera, Shayna Steele, Lillias White and Karen Ziemba. Tickets ranging from $50 for general seating to a $1,000 benefactor package can be had by call 327 1527 457 1539ing BC/EFA at (212) 840-0770, ext. 268, or by visiting www.BroadwayCares.org.

“People will sure get their money’s worth, don’t you think?” beams Ms. Newman, who is sure to bubble her way through the proceedings as mistress of ceremonies. “This year, we have a couple of incredible tributes planned. Chita is heading up a salute to Fred Ebb, and Cy Coleman’s widow, Shelby, who has never been on a stage before, is going to introduce a medley of his songs, delivered by all the great young Broadway singers.”

She brainstormed the event into existence herself a decade ago and has ring mastered it ever since. “I’m not being modest when I say I don’t know what I think about it. I can’t quite believe it. In our business, things don’t last – and to think, for 10 years, this just grows and grows – in terms of response and in terms of the amount of women who now call with funding. Tom Viola [BC/EFA’s executive director] said he thought that this last year was the best we’d had – a quarter of a million dollars – you know, no strings attached. Everybody volunteers. In fact, people call us. Nobody is paid – except, obviously, the stagehands. The theater is always donated. Nobody gets cars. It’s not like those other benefits. I think that people appreciate that. They know that there’s no other agenda.”

This annual fund-raiser is the silver lining to the very dark cloud that befell Ms. Newman two decades ago. “Back then, people did not talk as readily as they do now about breast cancer, but there were two who did – both very prominent and both, by the way, still alive: Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller. They just came right out and said they had breast cancer and the mastectomy and all that stuff that was absolutely shocking in those days.

“Like anybody else, I was scared. I’d get up every morning and – this is the God’s honest truth – I’d look in the paper, and, as long as they were still alive, I would take great hope.

“This was when it was at its worst for me. It was just awful. I remember that I made Adolph take all the calls. I literally was lying down on the rug. I mean, I was terrified. I can’t pretend I was brave. I wasn’t. I went through what everybody else goes through. I think that it’s better now – well, it’s never ‘better’ – but they have so many better treatments, and people live so much longer with it, and more people are open about it.”

During her initial bout with cancer, Ms. Newman found a positive focus, one that was admittedly inspired by the two living examples who had spurred her on. “It means something to people when you can show them that you can get through all this. I always wanted to do something big, and I thought if I ever do anything, I’d like to attach my name to it because that gives the illness a name and a face. Now, people are calling me and saying, ‘What do I do about this?’ and it’s not just about breast cancer, either.

“The illness took time. One year I had one mastectomy. The next year I had a second. Then, I had a lot of treatments.” Bills mounted accordingly, and she began to feel empathy for performers less fortunate than she. “I knew people weren’t insured in our business and that there were women who couldn’t even afford to get mammograms.”

A problem had presented itself, and Ms. Newman found the solution. “Broadway was having a very good year. We had people in town like Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, Betty Buckley, and then I knew people like Glenn Close, Bacall. I thought, ‘The thing to do is to do a show with all these great women.’ That was my idea. And then, Broadway Cares was sensational. Right away, they said yes. And the Actors’ Fund was thorough about making sure that there was a need.

“Then I literally wrote notes to people in their dressing rooms or called them because I knew them. Tom always said it was an idea whose time had come. Nobody said no. Uta Hagen did a scene from ‘Virginia Woolf’ that year, and Irene Worth. Lynn Redgrave was on that very first show. And there was, of course, Laurie Beechman, who was going through a terrible illness. There’s never been anything like it. And from then on, Tom said, ‘Put a thing in the program. This should go on every year.’ Well, it’s done just that.”

In a full decade of show, there have a lot of splendid stellar attractions, but, “without question,” her favorite had no stars – or, possibly, a star was just born: It was a dance piece called “Rock–Me–Mama,” choreographed by Jody Oberfelder that featured five young dancer-mothers and their infants who ranged in age from 12 months to 15 months. “We could only do it two years because the kids outgrew the act,” Ms. Newman recalls – they are now 9 years old – but, she feels, that particular sequence was a moving summation of the life-affirming spirit that motivates and animates “Nothing Like a Dame” each year.