How often is an understudy forced to go on stage for the star and ends up with a hugely successful career?
It happened at the Al Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, Wisconsin in November 1953. The male lead of Annie Get Your Gun needed an emergency operation. In went the understudy. The lead was Roger Franklin, who you likely have never heard of. The understudy was a little better known. He was Charles Nelson Reilly.
(Besides the pressure of filling in, Reilly had to improvise when there was a problem with one of the sets).
Earlier in the year, he was Jeb in a Washington, D.C. production of Showboat. This was before his great string of hits on Broadway in the early part of the 1960s. He also found time for TV appearances with Jack Paar, and one in 1963 on an Ed Sullivan Show that also included Anita Bryant.
The New York Daily News’s Robert Wahls sat down with him and put together this feature story on January 24, 1965.
Footlight
Actor-Teacher
WHEN a faucet in Charles Nelson Reilly's new Fifth Ave. penthouse leaks, he puts on a recording of "The Merry Widow." He then invites his landlord up for a drink. Before the drink is finished, the faucet no longer leaketh.
The Reilly landlord is Jan Kiepura, the Polish-Hungarian tenor, famous as the Prince Danilo of the hugely successful "The Merry Widow" of 1944. Mrs. Kiepura is Marta Eggerth, the widow of the same production. Jan is also an excellent plumber.
"My landlord sings like an angel when he installs a new washer," CNR reports. "And when Maria comes with him, such a duet!"
Look Him Up
Reilly—currently Cornelius Hackel, Yonkers sport, in "Hello, Dolly!"—is the kind of actor whose name you always look up in the program. Thousands looked him up as Bob Frump, nepotism's nephew, in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying."
"My friends say I should go out and be a star, make more money, become a national TV image," CNR says. "The only time I starred was at Fort Lee, N. J., in 'Charley's Aunt.' I never thought they'd get all of me on the marquee.
Likes Teaching
"The trouble with me is I like teaching almost as much as performing," he adds. "I'm dean of the musical comedy classes at the Herbert Berghof Studio on Bank St. Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland's daughter, is one of my students. I'm just beginning to realize I can teach."
CNR is a 6-foot, sandy-haired comedian who wears horn-rimmed glasses, or they wear him. He has long arms which rotate like helicopter blades, particularly when Carol Channing is teaching him to dance, "1-2-3." He's a master at delayed reactions.A product of Hartford, the life insurance city, Reilly is becoming known as hit insurance on Broadway. His first musical, "Bye Bye Birdie," ran over 900 performances. Charles played 900 times in "How to Succeed" before going into "Dolly." Last week, "Dolly" was a year old and Reilly turned 34. "Succeed" runs on.
Short Aria
"I almost became an opera singer, and I did sing with the Hartford Opera Company while going to Connecticut State," he says. "In so many Italian operas they need a character to shout 'ecco la' which means 'here it is!' That was my longest operatic phrase. I made my reputation on it in 'La Boheme.'
"When I came to New York in 1950, I was told by director Vincent J. Donohue to go back to Hartford," he recalls. "I didn't. I got into 22 off-Broadway shows and studied eight years with Berghof and his wife, Uta Hagen. My first musical was Jerry Herman's 'Parade.'
All That's Left
"I was a mail boy at the Waldorf-Astoria until a contessa's jewels were stolen. For some reason that made me nervous and I quit," he says. "I was also a fund raiser for the Manhattan Asthma Campaign. I almost became asthmatic, I was acting the part of a lecturer so well."
Why three names, Charles Nelson Reilly?
"The usual. When I joined Equity in 1950 they already had a Charles Nelson, a Nelson Charles, and a Charles Reilly. My full name was all that was left," he says. "Unless I wanted Charles Joe Reilly. Once you get it, you never forget it."
Envies Inventor
As resourceful off stage as he is on, Reilly thinks he envies most the man who made $1,000,000 just inventing the paper tab which releases a lump of sugar from its wrapping. He's a fountain of information.
"Did you ever wonder what happened to Mary Dees, who doubled for Jean Harlow in 'Saratoga,' which was completed after her death?" he wanted to know. "I'll tell you. She lives in the apartment under me."
I had never wondered. But isn’t nice to know?
Reilly wasn’t altogether a resounding success when he came west. He was in the featured cast of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir for two seasons. Before the Match Game came along in 1973, he had filmed The Karen Valentine Show, in which he played “a zany public relations dynamo.”
This syndicated column from the Newspaper Enterprise Association plays up more of his failures, and doesn’t even mention his best-known venture with Brett Somers and Gene Rayburn.
Charles Nelson Reilly Stars On Monty Hall Special
By DICK KLEINER
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — Chances are the dolphins at Sea World in Orlando, Fla., are still chuckling. And, probably, the whales and the seals are smiling, too. After all, they were exposed to Charles Nelson Reilly for a while, and that's enough to make anybody happy. Reilly, one of our more natural wits, is one of the stars of the ABC special, Monty Hall At Sea World, which will be televised on May 31. The only thing he regrets about it is that he didn't go for a dip with the whale.
They asked him to. When he signed to do the show, they had called and suggested he go in the tank with the whale.
“But I said no,” he says. “I had visions of a tank covered with barnacles and this big, ugly whale swimming around. But when I got there, I found the tank was so clean you could do an appendectomy in it, and the whale was positively beautiful. But I did go swimming with the dolphins. They were delight-ful people.”
This coming fall, Reilly will be on the new ABC series, Fireman's Ball. He wasn't in the company when they shot the pilot, however.
"They added me after the pilot," he says. "It's called 'Goosing Up The Project.' Whenever I've done that before, the show has flopped, but I'm doing it again. I'll do Fireman's Ball until Hamburgers starts —that will probably be in January. They have a firm order for 13, and we'll start shooting in November."
He still does the kiddie show, Lidsville, as well as specials and game shows. And he has his own company, making radio commercials. He's busy — but the one thing he isn't happy about is the state of his movie career. "I've made some blockbusters," he says. "Are you ready for these? My first film was that memorable epic, 'Let's Roc,' with Julius LaRosa and Phyllis Newman. Who can forget that? Then I did another great one, ‘Two Tickets to Paris,’ with Kay Medford and Joey Dee. Another monster.
"My third and last motion picture was actually a pretty good one — 'The Tiger Makes Out,' with Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. Those are my three motion pictures.
"There is absolutely no talk of a Charles Nelson Reilly Film Festival."
Somehow, we got on the subject of his artificial hair. Well, it's really not artificial, but it isn't his own.
"My hair," he says, "belongs to three Sicilian women. One contributed the grey, one the texture, one the color. Somewhere in Sicily, there are three bald but wealthy women."
For Reilly, all this started when he rode a streetcar as a boy. He had a vision —"something told me I was going to be an actor, so I started acting."
And we're all glad he did. Probably those happy dolphins in Florida are glad he did, too.
The hour-long special displayed the Carl Jablonski Dancers, the Oak Ridge High School marching band and TV’s Big Dealer singing (on Let’s Make a Deal, that might have been considered a “zonk”). Chuck got to use his talents in a rendition of Dr. Dolittle’s “Talk to the Animals.”
As his time was winding down, Charles looked back on his life in a one-man show. Someone has been good enough to post it, and we link to it below.
