Donna McKechnie

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Donna McKechnie (born November 16, 1940) is a Tony Award-winning American musical theater dancer, singer. actress and choreographer. She is perhaps best known for her professional and personal relationship with choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she collaborated on her most famous role, "Cassie" from the musical A Chorus Line.

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[edit] Early life

McKechnie was born in Pontiac, Michigan. 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. She studied for many years at the Rose Marie Floyd School of Dance in Royal Oak. 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. A stint in a Philadelphia production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (as Philia) 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.

[edit] Broadway Fame and Michael Bennett

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 led to a featured role in Burt Bacharach and Hal David's Promises, Promises, choreographed by Bennett. Along with Baayork Lee and Margo Sappington, she danced in one of Broadway's most famous numbers, Turkey Lurkey Time. 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), where she danced Tick-Tock. 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 (as Ivy). 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. She danced her third famous Bennett-McKechnie number, The Music and the Mirror, in which the vocal sections were tailored to her unusually large range. Her performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The role of Maggie was also based on her life. 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.

[edit] Television and Later 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 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, directed by her old Chorus Line castmate, Thommie Walsh. 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 was due to open in London's West End in a revival of the Sherman Brothers musical Over Here!. but the production never materialised.

[edit] Awards

  • 1996 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical --State Fair [nominee]
  • 1976 Tony Award Best Actress in a Musical -- A Chorus Line [winner]
  • 1976 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actress in a Musical --A Chorus Line [winner]
  • 1976 Theatre World Special Award -- A Chorus Line [winner] (Ensemble Performance)

[edit] Listen to

[edit] Watch

[edit] References

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

[edit] External links

Awards
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
Preceded by
Angela Lansbury
in Gypsy		 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical
1975-1976
for A Chorus Line		 Succeeded by
Clamma Dale
in Porgy and Bess