It was announced that he was going to be replacing Sergio Franchi in Nine, but they closed the show instead.
In addition to the My Fair Lady mentioned below, he sang in the 1980 film Those Lips, Those Eyes, in which he played an actor unhappily stuck playing operetta leads in summer stock and second-rate (if not third-rate) tours. It was nice that he did his own singing (or at least I think he did), but it's inconceivable listening to him that he would have been cast in those roles even in stock and tours.
He spoke very eloquently and movingly at the Cook tribute, but he was quite wrong when he said that Cook was something of a has-been in 1982 when he met her at Wally Harper's, and that it was Follies in Concert that brought her back to public attention. Follies in Concert didn't hurt, of course, but her career had been thriving since the Carnegie Hall concert in 1975. And for a year or two before that, she had been making her reputation as a cabaret artist. I think he may have also been misremembering which song she sang at the Barbara Walters dinner party he spoke of, but I wasn't there so I can't be sure.
Anyway, he really did speak extremely eloquently and movingly, but he was totally wrong about her career in 1982. |
