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Charles Nelson Reilly Talks With Johnny Carson About Bombing on Broadway
Charles Nelson Reilly was not just the guy at the end of the top tier on Match Game in the 1970s, he was an accomplished Broadway star and director. He was in the original cast of Hello Dolly with Carol Channing in 1964 and a Tony Award winner for his performance as Bud Frump in the original production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Reilly directed two Broadway hits, The Belle of Amherst (1976), The Nerd (1987). He was also a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight show, Carson thought the actor was hilarious and he was.
That's how the comic landed as a guest on the Tonight show just days after he presided over a Broadway flop, Break a Leg in 1979, a show that closed on the same night it opened at the Palace Theater. Break a Leg starred Julie Harris and Jack Weston, two seasoned actors on the Great White Way. SYNOPSIS: The lives of middle European theatre folk, particularly a feuding producer and critic, are examined in Ira Levin's play.
But back in 1979, still smarting from his one night only flop, Charles Nelson Reilly made a hilarious return to the Tonight show to publicly lick his wounds. To add to his misery, the daytime version of Match Game was canceled at the same time Break a Leg went belly up.
The last Broadway play Charles Nelson Reilly directed was a revival of The Gin Game (1997), also starring Julie Harris. That critically acclaimed production ran for a bit more than 4 months. Both Reilly and Harris were nominated for Tony Awards for The Gin Game.
From his obituary:
Though known to the world as — along with Brett Somers and Richard Dawson — one of the resident cut-ups on the saucy and popular "Match Game," to theatregoers Mr. Reilly was an important supporting player in the Broadway musical theatre of the 1960s. He was educated at HB Studios by the legendary Uta Hagen alongside such acting legends as Steve McQueen, Jerry Stiller, Jason Robards and Jack Lemmon. He made his Broadway debut as Mr. Henkel in Bye, Bye, Birdie (where he met future "Match Game" host Gene Rayburn), was nominated for a Tony Award as the original Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly! and received the Tony for his performance as the original Bud Frump How To Succeed In Business.... In this last, as a sniveling, conniving embodiment of corporate nepotism, he sang about his devotion to the daily "Coffee Break" and plotted the downfall of hero J. Pierpont Finch.
His Broadway appearances also included Skyscraper, a failed musical starring Julie Harris, who would become a friend and frequent collaborator, God's Favorite and Charlotte.
