Betty Buckley on Ken Howard: 'Ken Was a Wonderful Actor and Lovely Person'

As BroadwayWorld reported yesterday 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.

Betty Buckley, who starred alongside Howard in 1776, wrote of the departed:

I was so saddened to hear of Ken Howard passing away today. Ken was a wonderful actor and lovely person. He was my first Broadway leading man. I played Martha, his wife, to his Thomas Jefferson in the musical "1776". It was my Broadway debut at the 46th Street Theater now the Richard Rodgers.

My first scene featured a lengthy on stage kiss between Jefferson and Martha. John Adams had sent for Jefferson's bride to assist him with his writer's block while attempting to write the Declaration of Independence. I had never kissed anyone onstage, and I felt pretty self conscious about it all, but Ken was very courtly and made it all easy.

I have really enjoyed following his wonderful career for all these years. Of special note, he did such great work as the president of our union SAG and helped form the merger between SAG and AFTRA. He was the first President of SAG-AFTRA.

He will be greatly missed. My heart goes out to his wife Linda Fetters Howard.

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 / 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: Robert Catto

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