{"id":171939,"date":"2018-07-18T22:58:29","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T02:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=171939"},"modified":"2018-07-18T22:58:29","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T02:58:29","slug":"gary-beach-who-won-a-tony-in-the-producers-dies-at-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/18\/gary-beach-who-won-a-tony-in-the-producers-dies-at-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Beach, who won a Tony in ‘The Producers,’ dies at 70"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Born<\/a>
Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Beach at age 11 saw the original road tour of \u201cThe Music Man,\u201d starring Forrest Tucker, at Washington’s National Theatre and was hooked on musical theatre. (Featureflash Photo Agency \/ Shutterstock.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK — Gary Beach, a Broadway and TV veteran whose portrayal of a truly terrible theatre director in Mel Brooks’ monster hit \u201cThe Producers\u201d won him a Tony Award in 2001, has died, according to his agent, Steven Unger. He was 70.<\/p>\n

Unger said Beach died Tuesday at his home in Palm Springs, California. No cause was given.<\/p>\n

Beach’s other Broadway roles included Lumiere in \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d and Albin in the 2004 revival of \u201cLa Cage aux Folles,\u201d both of which earned him Tony nominations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Producers\u201d opened in 2001 and starred Nathan Lane as Max and Matthew Broderick as Leo, and featured Cady Huffman as Ulla and Roger Bart as Carmen Ghia.<\/p>\n

Beach played the self-absorbed and beyond-flamboyant director who gets to go on as Hitler and leads the cast in \u201cSpringtime For Hitler,\u201d the show’s most famous number. He reprised the role in the 2005 film.<\/p>\n

Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Beach at age 11 saw the original road tour of \u201cThe Music Man,\u201d starring Forrest Tucker, at Washington’s National Theatre and was hooked on musical theatre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to be a performer, but it never occurred to me to be a television performer or a movie actor,\u201d Beach told The Associated Press in 2001. \u201cTo me, it was always Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beach started college at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia, as a political science major but read a magazine article about the North Carolina School of the Arts, where \u201cshow business goes to school\u201d — and found his true calling.<\/p>\n

He did over 1,000 performances in New York and on the road of three musicals: \u201cAnnie,\u201d \u201cLes Miserables\u201d and \u201cBeauty and Beast,\u201d and over 800 performances in \u201c1776,\u201d the show that got him to Broadway.<\/p>\n

He survived flops — \u201cThe Mooney Shapiro Songbook,\u201d a one-performance bomb in 1981 — and moments of intense gladness, like the comedy \u201cLegends\u201d by \u201cChorus Line\u201d author James Kirkwood starring two real-life theatre legends, Mary Martin and Carol Channing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first day of rehearsal in Los Angeles, there I was, sitting between Peter Pan and Dolly Levi and trying to pretend there was absolutely nothing wrong with this picture,\u201d he recalled with a laugh.<\/p>\n

After nearly 20 years in New York, Beach moved to Los Angeles. \u201cI fell in love with the idea of having a car like an adult,\u201d he said. There, he acted in such shows as \u201cThe John Larroquette Show,\u201d \u201cMurder, She Wrote,\u201d \u201cSaved by the Bell\u201d and \u201cWill & Grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stayed in California for 13 years, only coming back to do \u201cBeauty and the Beast.\u201d He broke his ankle during the run after falling off a stack of dishes, went back to Los Angeles and got a call asking him to do a reading of \u201cThe Producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beach’s favourite moment in the show was a section of lyrics added to the \u201cSpringtime for Hitler\u201d number during the pre-Broadway run in Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s when Hitler does the tap challenge with the Allies and ends up rolling the wheelchair-bound Franklin Roosevelt off the stage,\u201d Beach explained. \u201cBrooks wrote, ‘It ain’t no mystery\/If it’s politics or history\/The thing you’ve got to know is\/Everything is show biz.\u201d’<\/p>\n

Beach then told Brooks, \u201cYou know what you’ve done? You’ve made ‘The Producers’ the toughest satire on Broadway.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement, The Baruch Frankel Routh Viertel Group, the producers of \u201cThe Producers,\u201d honoured Beach as \u201can actor of consummate skill and artistry, was a glorious human being; a gifted, generous and incredibly funny actor whose presence in a rehearsal room or on the stage lifted everyone’s spirit and inspired them to be the best they could be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — Gary Beach, a Broadway and TV veteran whose portrayal of a truly terrible theatre director in Mel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":171945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[53638,53639,11034],"class_list":["post-171939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-gary-beach","tag-steven-unger","tag-tony-award","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}