SOUTH PACIFIC and SOUND OF MUSIC Star Martha Wright Passes Away at 92

According to the New York Times, Broadway actress Martha Wright passed away last week in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She was 92 years old.

Born Martha Lucile Wiederrecht, Wright sang on the radio and played roles in musical theatre and opera in her native Seattle as a teenager. She moved to New York City and debuted on Broadway by age 21. Her early Broadway roles included Carol in the musical ghost story Great to Be Alive! (1950). She also appeared in supper clubs, including The Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, and came to the attention of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who cast her as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific (1951-54), to replace Mary Martin in the role; she played it for 1,047 performances until it closed. She then began to appear on television in The Eyes Have It and other programs. The New York Times called Wright "A coloratura soprano who personified the pert appeal of a 1950s ingénue".

In 1961, she again replaced Mary Martin in a Broadway role, Maria in The Sound of Music. She then performed in non-musical productions such as Mary, Mary at The National Theatre in Washington, D.C.She also continued to sing on the radio for WCBS in her own daily show for several years and recorded several albums such as Censored and Love, Honor and All That Jazz: Songs for After the Honeymoon Is Over (RCA Victor, 1960). She also appears on Firestone Presents Your Christmas Favorites (1964) with Gordon MacRae, Franco Corelli, and Roberta Peters. On television, she appeared on The Bell Telephone Hour several times and in her own 15-minute series, The Martha Wright Show, which aired in 1954 on Sunday evenings on ABC opposite Ronald W. Reagan's General Electric Theater on CBS. She performed a solo act around the U.S. at venues such as The Cocoanut Grove nightclub at The Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. She was a World's Fair Ambassadress in Seattle in 1962.

Wright and her husband, restaurateur George J. Manuche Jr. (1921-2013), had four children, and Wright curtailed her performing by the late 1960s, returning for a few engagements in the 1970s and 1980s.