Michele Lee on Ken Howard: 'He Was Always There For Me To Lean On'

As BroadwayWorld reported earlier this evening, Kenneth Joseph "Ken" Howard, Jr., a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor and president of the performers union SAG-AFTRA, died today, March 23, at his home near Los Angeles. He was 71.

When Michele Lee, who appeared alongside Howard in Broadway's Seesaw in the early '70s, learned of her co-star's passing, she told BroadwayWorld: "Ken was an extraordinarily generous actor to work with and we had remained close friends. I called him 'Big Tree' and he was always there for me to lean on."

Lee has also appeared on Broadway in Wicked, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and more.

Over a long career rich with great performances, the Yale-trained Howard parlayed his classic blond, blue-eyed handsomeness into a string of enduring characters on stage and screen, later becoming the first president of the 160,000-member performers union SAG-AFTRA.

Howard's interest in performing intensified and he was awarded a fellowship to the Yale School of Drama, which he attended after graduating from Amherst. Two years into his MFA program, he took an unplanned break to make his Broadway debut in the 1968 production of Neil Simon's "Promises, Promises."

With good notices for his performance in the show and firmly fixed on a career as an actor, Howard left Yale and never looked back. In 1969, he appeared as Thomas Jefferson in the musical "1776" for which he won a Theater World Award. He returned to Broadway the next year in "Child's Play," earning a Tony Award for his role as Paul Reese. His later Broadway credits included "Seesaw," "The Norman Conquests," "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," and the critically acclaimed one-man play "According to Tip" in which he played the iconic Speaker of the House Thomas P. 'Tip' O'Neill.

He was a brilliant and energetic performer, conversant with long passages of Shakespearean dialogue and thousands of lines from classic musicals and dramatic plays. His 2015 induction into the exclusive New York performing arts social club The Lambs was an enduring example of extemporaneous performance cum speechifying, with Howard delivering an unrehearsed 30-minute career retrospective that was both comedic and captivating.

Howard was born March 28, 1944, in El Centro, California, to Kenneth Joseph and Martha Carey Howard. He had a younger brother, Donald Howard, also an actor. All are deceased. He is survived by his beloved wife of 25 years Linda Fetters Howard, a prominent stuntwoman and former president of the Stuntwomen's Association of Motion Pictures, and three adult stepchildren from a previous marriage.

In lieu of flowers, remembrance contributions may be made to the SAG-AFTRA Foundation and the Onyx and Breezy Foundation for the Welfare of Animals.

Photo Credit: Stephen Sorokoff