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Nanette
Fabray made her Broadway debut opposite Danny Kaye in
Cole Porter's Let’s Face It! (1941), where she was
understudied by none other than Carol
Channing. Later triumphs included Harold Arlen's Bloomer
Girl (1944) and Jule Styne's High Button Shoes (1947),
which featured direction by George Abbott and choreography by Jerome
Robbins. But it was under the direction of the legendary Elia
Kazan that Fabray was to give what most people consider to be the finest
performance of her career: as Susan Cooper in Kurt Weill and Alan Jay
Lerner's highly underrated and searingly brilliant Love Life (1948).
Here, she sang many great tunes, most notably "Mr. Right" late
in the second act, and she won the 1949 Tony Award as Best Actress in a
Musical for her performance in what is cited by many theatre historians
as the first "concept musical." (Unfortunately, due to a
musician's union strike that year, no cast album was made to preserve
Fabray's performance.) Unfortunately, after this great triumph,
she went from one forgettable flop to the next, with Arms and the
Girl (1950), Make a Wish (1951), and Irving Berlin's
unfortunate swan song, Mr. President (1962). Her
last appearance on Broadway was in Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark's play No
Hard Feelings (1973), which lasted a total of one performance.
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