Remembering Robert Clary: From the Concentration Camps to Broadway and Hollywood
Clary scored a great success on Broadway in "Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1952." My father, who enjoyed that show, recalled Eartha Kitt and Robert Clary as the standouts in the cast of largely-unknown up-and-coming performers that also included Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostley, Carol Lawrence, and Ronny Graham. None of the performers were yet big names. And the smart, fast-paced revue gave them important exposure. (My father noted that this was an especially good revue, in a time when revues were still a staple of Broadway. He missed the revues when revues fell out of fashion on Broadway.) Producer/writer Leonard Sillman, whose various New Faces revues enlivened Broadway from the 1930’s through the 1960’s, helped advance the careers of plenty of talented newcomers over the years, beginning with Henry Fonda and Imogene Coca, the standouts in Sillman’s first revue in the series, "New Faces of 1934." [more]