Remembering Broadway: Leading Women…Glittering and Gay … – Times Square Chronicles
Barbara Cook starred in the Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy, Candide, She Loves Me and The Music Man, winning a Tony Award for the last. Barbara began singing at an early age, at the Elks Club and to her father over the phone.
While visiting Manhattan in 1948 with her mother, she decided to stay and try to find work as an actress. In 1949 she performed in a touring vaudeville act entitled A Toast To Rodgers and Hammerstein. Barbara began to sing at other clubs and resorts, eventually procuring an engagement at the Blue Angel club in Manhattan in 1950.
Cook made her Broadway debut as Sandy in the short-lived 1951 musical Flahooley. She landed another role quickly, portraying Ado Annie in the 1951 City Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!,
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Also in 1952, Cook made her first television appearance on the show Armstrong Circle Theatre which presented her in an original play entitled Mr. Bemiss Takes a Trip. In 1954, Cook appeared in the short-lived soap opera Golden Windows and starred as Jane Piper in a television version of Victor Herbert’s operetta Babes in Toyland. That summer, she returned to City Center to portray Carrie Pipperidge in a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.
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In 1955, Plain and Fancy and then Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 operetta Candide, in which she premiered the vocally demanding, aria “Glitter and Be Gay”.
Although Candide was not a commercial success, Cook’s portrayal of Cunegonde established her as one of Broadway’s leading ingenues. In 1957 she appeared in a second City Center revival of Carousel, this time in the role of Julie Jordan, and won a Tony Award for creating the role of Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson’s 1957 hit The Music Man.
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Cook continued to appear regularly on television in the late 1950s, starring in a 1956 Producers’ Showcase production of Bloomer Girl,
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a 1957 live broadcast of The Yeomen of the Guard, and a 1958 musical adaptation of Hansel and Gretel.
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She also made appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show and The Play of the Week.
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Cook starred in an acclaimed 1960 City Center revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I and in the short-lived 1961 musical The Gay Life.
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In 1963, she created the role of Amalia Balash in the classic Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me. “Vanilla Ice Cream”, became one of Cook’s signature songs.
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In the mid-1960s, Cook began working less frequently. She appeared in the 1964 flop Something More!, she replaced Sandy Dennis in the play Any Wednesday in 1965 in Jules Feiffer’s 1967 play Little Murders. She starred in national tours of The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964 and Funny Girl in 1967. Her last original “book” musical role on Broadway came in 1971 when she played Dolly Talbo in The Grass Harp.
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She began struggling with depression, obesity, and alcoholism, but in the mid-1970s Cook met composer and pianist Wally Harper. Harper who convinced her to put together a concert and on January 26, 1975, accompanied by Harper, she made her debut in a solo concert at Carnegie Hall that resulted in a successful live album. Her collaboration with Harper that lasted until his death in 2004. Cook became a successful concert performer. Over the next three decades, the duo performed at Michael’s Pub, the St. Regis Hotel, Carnegie Hall. That performance was captured on the CD It’s Better With a Band.
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In 1986, Cook was nominated for an Olivier Award for her one-woman show at London’s Donmar Warehouse and the Albery Theatre. She won the Drama Desk Award “Outstanding One Person Show” in 1987 for her Broadway show A Concert for the Theatre. She performed for Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
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In September 1985 she appeared with the New York Philharmonic as Sally in the renowned concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. In 1986, she recorded the role of Martha in the Sharon Burgett musical version of The Secret Garden along with John Cullum, Judy Kaye, and George Rose. In 1987 she performed the role of Julie Jordan in a concert version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel with Samuel Ramey as Billy, Sarah Brightman as Carrie.
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She provided both her acting and singing skills to the animated film version of Thumbelina, as Thumbelina’s mother which featured music by Barry Manilow. That same year she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
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In November 1997, Cook celebrated her 70th birthday by giving a concert at Albert Hall in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, joined by performers including Elaine Stritch and Maria Friedman.
In 2000, she was one of the only American performers chosen to perform at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival in the Sydney Opera House and in 2000, she was joined by Lillias White, Malcolm Gets, and Debbie Gravitte on the studio cast recording of Jimmy McHugh’s Lucky in the Rain.
In February 2001, Cook returned to Carnegie Hall to perform Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim which was recorded live and released on CD. She took the concert to the West End Lyric Theatre in 2001. She garnered two Olivier Award nominations for Best Entertainment and Best Actress in a Musical for the concert. She went on to perform Sings Mostly Sondheim at Lincoln Center for a sold-out fourteen-week run from December 2001 to January 2002, and again in June 2002 to August 2002. She was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Theatrical Event. In June and August 2002 Cook performed Sings Mostly Sondheim at the Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center as part of the Sondheim Celebration.
In 2004 she performed two limited engagement concert series at the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi Newhouse theaters at Lincoln Center, “Barbara Cook’s Broadway!” She received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (“for her contribution to the musical theater”) and a nomination for the Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Solo Performance. A recording of the concert was made.
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Two years after Wally Harper’s death on January 2006, Cook became the first female pop singer to be presented by the Metropolitan Opera in the company’s more than one hundred-year history. She presented a solo concert of Broadway show tunes and classic jazz standards, with guest singers Audra McDonald, Josh Groban and Elaine Stritch (although Stritch did not appear on the CD of the concert). The concert was recorded and subsequently released on CD.
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In 2007 Cook performed in two sold-out concerts with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. In June 2008, Cook appeared in Strictly Gershwin at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, with the full company of English National Ballet.
In 2009, she performed with the Princeton Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and gave concerts in Boca Raton, Florida, and at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. She performed in a cabaret show at Feinsteins at the Regency (New York City) which opened in April 2009.
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Cook returned to Broadway in 2010 in the Roundabout Theatre’s Stephen Sondheim revue Sondheim on Sondheim, opposite Vanessa L. Williams, Norm Lewis and Tom Wopat. Cook was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the category of Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical. On April 12, 2011, Cook appeared with James Taylor, Bette Midler and Sting, at Carnegie Hall for a gala called “Celebrating 120 Years of Carnegie Hall”.
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Cook was named an honoree at the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors, held on December 4, 2011 (the ceremony was broadcast on CBS on December 27, 2011). Performers paying tribute to Cook on that occasion included Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patti LuPone, Glenn Close, Kelli O’Hara, Rebecca Luker, Sutton Foster, Laura Osnes, Anna Christy, and Audra McDonald.
In 2016, Cook published her autobiography Then & Now: A Memoir with collaborator Tom Santopietro. She announced her retirement in May 2017.
Barbara Cook died from respiratory failure at her home in Manhattan on August 8, 2017, at age 89. The marquee lights were dimmed for one minute in tribute to Cook on August 9. Cook’s friend and fellow musical theater actress, Elaine Paige paid tribute to Cook during her BBC Radio 2 show on August 13.