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.
Nancy Walker started life as Anna Mrytle Swoyer. As to how she became Ms. Walker, the story goes something like this. Anna Swoyer was auditioning for a bit part in Best Foot Forward. Legendary director, George Abbot, thought she was another actress named, Helen Walker. George liked her, she got the part which was eventually rewritten into a starring role, and she liked the name, she kept the “Walker”. Best Foot Forward was her Broadway debut. She went on to make several Broadway appearances, perhaps best known for her portrayals of Hildy Esterhazy, the spirited cabbie, in On the Town and Kay Cram in 1960’s, Do Re Mi. While experiencing vocal problems during Look Ma, I’m Dancin’!, Nancy met, and later married, vocal coach and musical theater teacher, David Craig. Ms. Walker gained national attention in the early 70’s as Ida Morgenstern, Rhoda’s mother, on the Mary Tyler Moore show and the spin off, Rhoda. She also became part of pop culture when she played Rosie, a diner waitress, in a series of commercials for Bounty paper towels. Those commercials helped popularize the product’s catchphrase, “The quicker picker upper”. Alright, here goes:
1) Nancy Walker did Look Ma, I’m Dancin’! with Tommy Rall
2) Tommy Rall was in Cry For Us All with Charles Rule
3) Charles Rule was the original Policeman in The Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford.
“I’m the first girl in the second row
In the third scene of the fourth number
In fifth position at ten o’clock on the nose.”
-Lily Malloy in Look Ma, I’m Dancin’!
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.
