Donna McKechnie

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Donna McKechnie is a Tony Award-winning American musical theater dancer, singer. actress and choreographer.

Born in Pontiac, Michigan on November 16, 1942, she took beginner ballet classes at age five. Her earliest influence was the classic British ballet film The Red Shoes (1948), which prompted her, at age six, to plan a career as a ballerina. Despite her parents' strong misgivings, she moved to New York City when she was 17. Rejected after an audition for the American Ballet Theatre, she found employment in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall but walked off the job on the day of dress rehearsal to do summer stock at the Carousel Theatre in Framingham, Massachusetts.

After doing a Welch's Grape Juice commercial and the first L'eggs stockings commercial, she was cast in a touring company of West Side Story. In 1961, she made her Broadway debut in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, where she met choreographer Bob Fosse and his wife, Gwen Verdon, the show's dance captain. A stint in a Philadelphia production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was followed by the NBC music series Hullabaloo, where she was a featured dancer and met Michael Bennett, who became a guiding force in her life and career.

Her television work included a regular role on the Gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, guest appearances on The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Rowan & Martin's Laugh In and Cheers, plus the role of Suzi Laird on several Fame episodes.

In April, 1968, McKechnie was back on Broadway in the short-lived musical version of Leo Rosten's collection of short stories The Education Of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, which lead to a featured role in Burt Bacharach and Hal David's Promises, Promises, choreographed by Bennett. It was here that she first attracted notice from critics and theatergoers alike. This was followed by a role in the touring company of Call Me Madam, starring Ethel Merman.

Bennett showcased McKechnie again in Stephen Sondheim's Company (1970). After leaving the Broadway cast, she reprised her role in the Los Angeles and London companies, and also toured in the 1971 revival of On the Town. In March, 1973, she choreographed and performed in the highly acclaimed one-night-only concert Sondheim: A Musical Tribute at the Shubert Theatre in New York. In 1974, she co-starred with Richard Kiley and Bob Fosse in the unsuccessful musical film version of the classic, The Little Prince.

McKechnie was part of Bennett's group therapy-style workshops that evolved into the Broadway smash A Chorus Line, in which she portrayed Cassie, a character based in great part on herself. Her performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She married Bennett in 1976, but after only a few months they separated and eventually divorced, remaining good friends until his death from AIDS in 1987.

In 1980, McKechnie was diagnosed with arthritis and told she never would dance again. She pursued various physical, psychological, and holistic healing remedies, and was well enough to return to the Broadway company of A Chorus Line in 1986. During the remainder of the 1980s she also toured in Sweet Charity and Annie Get Your Gun, and she appeared in a London revival of Can-Can.

In the early 1990s, McKechnie appeared off-Broadway twice, first in a revue entitled Cut the Ribbons, followed by Annie Warbucks, a less successful sequel to the hit Annie. In 1993, she reunited with most of the original cast of Company for three concert performances. In 1996, she was awarded the Fred Astaire Award for Best Female Dancer for her performance in a Broadway adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's film State Fair. In February, 1997, she played Phyllis in a concert performance of Follies at London's Drury Lane Theatre, and the following year took on the role of Sally in a production of that same show at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.

In 2002, McKechnie starred in the pre-Broadway production of the Jerry Herman musical revue Showtune. In recent years, she has toured periodically in her one-woman show Inside the Music, a potpourri of songs, dances and anecdotes about her life in the theater and her successful battle with arthritis. Her autobiography, Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life, written with Greg Lawrence, was published by Simon & Schuster on August 29, 2006, only weeks before the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line opened on October 5.

In January 2007, McKechnie opened in London's West End in a revival of the Sherman Brothers musical Over Here!

Contents

[edit] Listen to

[edit] Watch

[edit] Reference

  • Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life by Donna McKechnie with Greg Lawrence, published in New York by Simon & Schuster, 2006.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Angela Lansbury
in Gypsy		 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical
1976
for A Chorus Line		 Succeeded by
Dorothy Loudon
in Annie
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