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Minerva Pious (March 5, 1903 - March 16, 1979), an actress/comedian in American radio, became a radio icon playing malaprop-prone Jewish housewife Pansy Nussbaum in Fred Allen's famous "Allen's Alley" current-events skits.

Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Pious spent the majority of her life and career in New York. She worked extensively as a radio comedian, but gained a regular such job when she joined Allen in the 1930s. Playing a number of dialect roles in Allen's clever news spoofs, Pious had developed those into the single Russian-Jewish housewife Mrs. Nussbaum by 1942, the year in which Allen's news spoofs finally developed into the "Allen's Alley" routines.

Pious became a fixture in the routines until Allen's show ended in 1949. Invariably, she greeted Allen's knock on her door with her Yiddish "Nuuuuuu," then answered Allen's cheery "Mrs. Nussbaum!" with lines like, "You are expectink maybe Veinstein Chuychill?" or "You are expecting maybe Cecil B. Schlemeil?" Pious's portions of the Alley segments usually involved one or another joke at the expense of Mrs. Nussbaum's never-seen husband, Pierre. Her distinctive accented voice and Jane Ace-like knack for malaprops made her a series trademark, and she was enough of a favourite that she was often invited to play Mrs. Nussbaum on other comedies such as The Jack Benny Program (inviting him to her new restaurant: "We feature soft lights and hard salami") and Duffy's Tavern.

Pious also enjoyed frequent parts in the radio plays of Norman Corwin and on The Columbia Workshop, comedy routines on Kate Smith's series, and parts on The Goldbergs and on the soap opera Life Can Be Beautiful, amongst others. Her few film credits included playing Mrs. Nussbaum on-camera in Fred Allen's It's in the Bag and a featured voice role in Pinocchio in Outer Space.

In later years, Pious made television appearances on shows like The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Chevrolet Television Theatre. She appeared briefly in the television soap The Edge of Night in 1956, playing a landlady, and she had small roles in the films Joe MacBeth (1955) and Love in the Afternoon (1957, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn). Her last known role was as a woman in the theater in the 1973 Joanne Woodward film, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams.