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Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95

Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95

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Will42
#1Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/16/12 at 2:20pm

Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95

By MARGALIT FOX

Joan Roberts, who created the role of the winsome “yeller”-haired heroine, Laurey, in the original Broadway production of “Oklahoma!,” died on Monday in Stamford, Conn. She was 95.

Her death was announced by the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. One of the last living members of the musical’s original cast, Ms. Roberts had lived for many years in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

“Oklahoma!,” which opened in 1943, was only Ms. Roberts’s second Broadway show. She had previously appeared in the short-lived musical “Sunny River” (1941), with music by Sigmund Romberg and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Asked by Mr. Hammerstein to audition for “Oklahoma!,” Ms. Roberts first tried out for the part of Ado Annie, the feisty young woman incapable of demurral.

But Mr. Hammerstein soon realized that her lyric soprano was better suited for the demure Laurey, a role for which Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin were reported to have been considered. Celeste Holm, who died last month at 95, was cast as Ado Annie. “Oklahoma!” ran for 2,212 performances and became a benchmark by which later musicals would be judged.

Ms. Roberts was born Josephine Rose Seagrist in New York City on July 15, 1917, and reared in the Astoria section of Queens.

Paramount Pictures had a studio in Astoria. When Josephine was 5 or 6, she marched in, announced she wanted to be in pictures, and was cast as an extra in several films.

As a girl, Josephine studied with the singing teacher Estelle Liebling, who also taught Beverly Sills. As a teenager, she toured the country in Shubert brothers musicals, taking the stage name Joan Roberts early on.

“Oklahoma!,” the first collaboration between Mr. Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers, was an adaptation of Lynn Riggs’s 1931 Broadway play, “Green Grow the Lilacs.” At one of Ms. Roberts’s many auditions for the musical, she was asked to read from Mr. Riggs’s script.

“It was filled with vulgar language, and during the reading I just dropped the words because no 18-year-old farm girl would use those words,” Ms. Roberts told The New York Times in 2001. “I never thought I’d get the part but I did, and, you know, none of that language was in it when we opened.”

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, “Oklahoma!” opened on March 31, 1943, at the St. James Theater to glowing notices; critics commended Ms. Roberts and the male lead, Alfred Drake, for their freshness and fine voices. (In the show’s ballet sequences, choreographed by Agnes de Mille, their characters were danced by Katharine Sergava and Marc Platt.)

Ms. Roberts’s best-known musical numbers included “Many a New Day,” “Out of My Dreams” and, with Mr. Drake, “People Will Say We’re in Love.” Her performance as Laurey led to a contract with the Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, but the roles he promised never materialized. The 1955 film version of “Oklahoma!,” produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr., starred Shirley Jones as Laurey.

Ms. Roberts appeared in several more Broadway musicals of the ’40s, including “Marinka” and “High Button Shoes,” before settling into a life of marriage, motherhood, summer stock and regional theater. In 2001, she returned to Broadway after more than 50 years to play the operetta star Heidi Schiller in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”

Ms. Roberts’s first husband, John Donlon, died in 1965; her second, Alexander Peter, died in 1993. Survivors include a son, John Donlon; two stepsons, Robert and James Peter; and a number of step-grandchildren and step-great-grandchildren.

Though “Oklahoma!” made Ms. Roberts a star, it did leave her, she said, with one abiding regret. During backers’ auditions to raise money for the show, she and other cast members were asked to buy $500 shares of their own. Actors being impecunious, they declined. By the time it closed in 1948, The Times reported that year, “Oklahoma!” had netted its investors a return of 2,500 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/theater/joan-roberts-heroine-of-original-oklahoma-dies-at-95.html?_r=1

R.I.P.
It's so weird (or symbolic?) that both original females stars of the show lived to be 95 years old and died less than a month apart.

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best12bars
#2Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/16/12 at 3:55pm

RIP, dear Laurey.


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Almira
#2Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/16/12 at 4:07pm

Sounds like a great life well lived.

Congrats and RIP.


Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

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Almira
#3Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/16/12 at 4:10pm

From OKLAHOMA to FOLLIES

One More Kiss...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x13ZHWcl2N8


Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt

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TxTwoStep
#4Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/16/12 at 4:27pm

with the passing of Celeste Holm, who i adored...(not that i didn't Joan Roberts)...does that leave only George S. Irving alive from the original cast? or did i miss his passing? perhaps there are lesser known names or those no longer in the bidness still alive...that period-faithful production in NC should have tried to gather them up (maybe the school did and again i missed it).


Will: They don't give out awards for helping people be gay... unless you count the Tonys. "I guarantee that we'll have tough times. I guarantee that at some point one or both of us will want to get out. But I also guarantee that if I don't ask you to be mine, I'll regret it for the rest of my life..."

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NoName3
#5Original ‘Oklahoma!’ Star Joan Roberts Dies at 95
Posted: 8/17/12 at 12:18am

Out of my dreams... and into my heart...