I'm pretty sure Barbara Cook never played Eliza, although some surprising and interesting and perhaps seemingly unlikely people did, such as Dorothy Collins, Allyn Ann McLerie, and (perhaps these two are not quite as surprising) Jane Powell and Joan Copeland.
Amazingly, in 1977 Anne Rogers, at the age of 44 and more more than 20 years after she'd first played the role, joined up with Edward Mulhare to do a seven-month tour based on the 1976 revival. To my knowledge, they had never appeared in it together before. And then they did it one more time in 1980 at the Coachlight Dinner Theatre in Nanuet, NY. That might have been a bit easier as the production cut "Show Me." Actually, for all I know they did it again somewhere later. She must have known how to sing it and get through it. Her soprano was very light (or at least it sounds that way on recordings), and I suspect she just never forced it. Especially when you count in her later performances, I think that Rogers probably played more performances of the role than anyone else ever has, including Andrews (who did a lot of performances of it between Broadway and London).
There's a studio-cast recording with Rogers, which I've never heard. |
