This is a weekly feature on BroadwayLiving.com. It’s
just like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. You
know how it goes…someone throws out an actor’s
name and you have to try to connect them to Kevin Bacon
in six steps or less.
I thought it might be fun to do
the same thing with the theater’s luminaries. I
will be trying to connect them to the longest running
show in Broadway
history, The Phantom of the Opera and its
very first “Phantom”, Michael Crawford.
Buddy Hackett, the rubbery-faced
comedian, was born on this date in 1924. He was born Leonard Hacker
in Brooklyn, NY and while he was in high school he
began his performing career by touring the “Borscht
Belt”, the Catskills resorts that gave many comedians
their start.
Buddy made his Broadway debut in
Sidney Kingsley’s Lunatics
and Lovers (1954). His performance in
the show brought him to the attention of producer
Max Liebman. Liebman made him the star of the
sitcom Stanley. The show would also
help launch another up and coming comedian, Carol
Burnett.
In 1960, Hackett returned to Broadway in the comedy, Viva
Madison Avenue. The show flopped, giving
only two performances, but notices for Mr. Hackett
were favorable. He continued to make television
appearances and was a frequent guest of talk show
hosts Jack Paar and Arthur Godfrey. American
audiences quickly became familiar with the brash
comedian, whose routines often included off-color
material.
With the huge box-office success of the 1963 movie It’s
a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,Buddy was soon widely
known. In 1964 he once again returned
to Broadway only this time as the headliner of the
musical I Had a Ball. The show was
dismissed by the critics but the show became a surprise
hit mainly on the positive word of mouth about Mr.
Hackett’s portrayal of the Coney Island psychologist/psychic,
Garside the Great.
Hackett’s career included
numerous TV appearances and dozens of movies, among
them the role of Marcellus
in The Music Man (1962) and the voice of Scuttle
in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989).
1) Buddy Hackett did I Had a Ball with
Ted Thurston
2) Ted Thurston was in Onward Victoria with Kenneth H.
Waller
3) Kenneth H. Waller was the original Monsieur Lefèvre in The
Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford.
“Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud,
doctor please don’t be annoyed
but I really saw a vision –yes I did.
Dr. Freud, Dr. Freud
with your teachings I have toyed,
now I’ve got a funny feeling in my id.”
…Garside
in I Had aBall
So that’s the game. Join
me each week as I try to come up with new ways of
connecting Michael
Crawford to the entire theater community.
