What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened? — Page 2

#26

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 10:34am

I was also very saddened by Jerry Orbach's passing. John Ritter and Jason Raize were both shocking to me.

Of course any time we lose someone that has even the most insignificant impact on our lives it's a sad day.

#27

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 10:39am

Jason Raize's death was so unexpected and so sad. I love his voice very much.

Cy Coleman's death was so sudden, it was like woah!

I didn't know that Steve Barton was dead, how did he die?

As for David Carrol, my teacher was besdt friends with him as kids and adults, and she told me about how sad it was.

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"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
To Kill A Mockingbird

#28

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 10:53am

Larry Kert

#29

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 11:01am

I'm older than most here, so I have to say three: David James Carroll, Kim Milford, both of whom I had met, and Raul Julia.

#30

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 11:13am

Jason Raize
Jerry Orbach
Cy Coleman
Wally Harper

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"People who like Sondheim enjoy cruelty."-LuvtheEmcee

#31

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 12:38pm

I think Jason Raize's death was the saddest for me. Most everyone else that was mentioned on the board lived full and sucessful lives. Jason, on the other hand, had his whole life before him. I don't understand would have caused him to believe suicide was the best way to go. Had he lived longer, who knows how much more he could have contributed.

#32

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 12:54pm

Madeline Kahn. Like some of the others, she had been sick for a while, but still.

#33

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:01pm

The Greatest Carl Anderson

In 2002, Jesus Christ Superstar tour played near my place with Carl, but I missed the show. And in 2004 I knew that Carl passed away. One of the most regrets in my theatre life.

#34

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:06pm

my greatest shock, and i blocked it out until this minute, was lynne thigpen. i had a twilight zone moment when i heard. she was one of the liveliest people you would ever meet. her death was an awful blow and i carried it around for a while.

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Mind is Mantra.

#35

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:08pm

Definetly Jerry Orbach was one. I was really upset when I first heard. It's still hard to believe.

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"This table, he is over one hundred years old. If I could, I would take an old gramophone needle and run it along the surface of the wood. To hear the music of the voices. All that was said." - Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife

#36

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:12pm

I remember screaming when I saw Gwen Verdon's obit...

#37

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:20pm

Michael Jeter -- such a comedic genious. It's hard to imagine someone that makes that many people laugh having to die.
Same thing rings true for Madeline Kahn -- such a FUNNY, talented woman who went WAY before her time.

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". . . POP . . ."

#38

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:26pm

I second Madeleine Kahn, she was a funny performer

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#39

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:29pm

Jerry Orbach, Dorothy Loudon and Gregory Hines.

God, I miss them!

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"I know now that theatre saved my life." - Susan Stroman

#40

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:50pm

Jason Raize. I knew him...or at least I thought I did. He would have turned 30 this summer....

#41

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 1:54pm

Michael Bennett
Danitra Vance

as for non-theater related deaths, nothing blew me away more than the death of River Phoenix.

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"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~ Muhammad Ali

#42

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 4:59pm

I'll second Lynne Thigpen.

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"Y'all have a GRAND day now"

#43

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 7:11pm

Anne Bancroft's death really saddened me. I hadn't known that she was ill. In her career she won a Tony for Miracle Worker, an Emmy and an Academy Award. My impression had always been that she and Mel Brooks had an amazing marriage and that he adored her.
I felt as if she was his life force and so felt as if not only did the theater community lose a great talent, but that it might take Mel Brooks a long time to recover his passion

#44

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 7:34pm

The ones we lost in their prime always get me...
I often wonder what theatre would be like now, if they had been around longer.

Michael Bennett

Jerry Ross - together with his partner Richard Adler, Jerry wrote "The Pajama Game" and "Damn Yankees." He died at the youthful age of 29, winning both his Tonys for "Damn Yankees" posthumously.

Jonathan Larson

PERFORMERS:
Ron Richardson (Tony winner for Big River), Timothy Scott (B'way's first Mr. Mistoffelees), Gregg Burge (Sophisticated Ladies)... So many others.

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"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."

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blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22

#45

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 7:58pm

Gregory Mitchell.

I was just copying my 1999 clip of some of the Chicago cast singing Christmas carols on the Today show for somebody, and it struck me that two of the people in it are no longer with us, Greg Mitchell and Mark Arvin. Both gone way too early.

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"I cried during the Frug." - MC

#46

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 9:11pm

Ms. Kahn
Ms. Loundon
and the lovely Margo Skinner

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"You look like a Christmas tree with a drinking problem!" - MEMPHIS

#47

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 9:13pm

Bob Merrill

#48

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 10:39pm

Many of my personal saddest losses have been mentioned. But the waves of AIDS-related deaths among the theater community were just devastating.

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"The theater is my life. I live it. I breathe it. I fondle it till it falls asleep." Jack (Will And Grace) http://feathah.blogspot.com

#49

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 10:45pm

Jerry Orbach and Jonathan Larson

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And the other thing about the Phantom Lady was, Bert, she realized, in the city that never sleeps... What did she realize, Kitten? That all the songs she'd listened to, all the love songs, that they were only songs. What's wrong with that? Nothing, if you don't believe in them. But she did, you see. She believed in enchanted evenings, and she believed that a small cloud passed overhead and cried down on a flower bed, and she even believed there was breakfast to be had... Where? On Pluto. The mysterious, icy wastes of Pluto.

#50

re: What Broadway performers deaths have surprised/saddened?

Posted: 8/31/05 at 11:27pm

Fred Ebb
Ann Miller
and Ted Bales, a marvelous comedic actor, seen off-Broadway in Party.

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'Our whole family shouts. It comes from us livin' so close to the railroad tracks'