![]() A 1957 Broadway musical version, Shinbone Alley, co-starred Bracken and Eartha Kitt in 1960, he and Tammy Grimes played the leads for PBS-TV’s Play of the Week and, in 1971, Bracken and Channing supplied the voices for an animated film version. Carol Channing did the voice of the toujours gai feline, mehitabel. In 1955, the release of the Columbia album archy and mehitabel began Bracken’s long association with a cockroach-poet named archy (who could only type lowercase keys). I’m not a comedian I’m an actor who does comedy.”īracken returned to Broadway in 1953, taking over the lead from Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch, in which he later toured. In his biography of Judy Garland, Gerold Frank writes that Garland found Bracken so funny during the making of Summer Stock (1950) that “every time she looked at him, Judy broke up.” Recalled Bracken, “They finally had to get someone else to stand off camera so that Judy could say the lines.” He claimed that movies typecast him: “I wanted a change of pace, but no one would listen. gave me a whole new career, and that’s what they remember me from now.” and Home Alone 2 have been seen by all the kids. “I also loved Summer Stock, The Fleet’s In, and Hold That Blonde. “I think those are my favorites,” he recalled. In the latter, he was Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith, who’s mistakenly thought to be a war hero. The former cast Bracken as Norval Jones, a Good Samaritan who weds pregnant Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) and becomes a national hero when she gives birth to sextuplets. His most memorable movies were two 1944 Preston Sturges comedies, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero. Bracken was signed by Paramount Pictures and stayed in Hollywood a dozen years. In the film and Arnaz hit it off with the film’s female lead, Lucille Ball. Bracken, Van Johnson (who had understudied three roles), and Desi Arnaz made their feature debuts Brother Rat was my first Broadway hit I met my wife in What a Life and Too Many Girls sent me to California.” When Abbott signed to direct the 1940 movie version of the Rodgers and Hart musical Too Many Girls, he brought several cast members to Hollywood. Said Bracken, “I owe George Abbott my whole life. After being cast in the Boston company of Brother Rat, Bracken succeeded Frank Albertson in the Broadway production. A series of flop shows preceded three hits directed by George Abbott. But it was there that a priest, Father Smith, put the bug of show business in my system.”Īs a child actor, he worked in Kiddie Troupers movie shorts and made his Broadway debut in 1930’s The Lottery. I was always dreaming about other things. I shared a bill with Ethel Merman Ethel sang ‘Honey, Stay in Your Own Backyard’ and I did ‘Cross My Heart, Mother, I Love you.'” Bracken didn’t complete grade school: “I attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel but they didn’t know what to do with me. I did shows at the Knights of Columbus Hall. I sang in courtyards, and people would throw coins. “My father was a foreman for the East River Gas Company and my mother demonstrated appliances for Con Edison at Queens Plaza. The youngest of three sons of Irish immigrants, Edward Vincent Bracken was born in Astoria, New York. But even if I only claimed the 11,000 that I’ve got in Equity, nobody’s even close to that.” Those were not Equity shows and they weren’t counted. Paper Mill press representative Charlie Siedenburg introduced Bracken as “affable and congenial,” and the actor - always ready to get a laugh - scowled, “What the hell do you want?” He noted that his record was “unofficial, because I played Hello, Dolly! overseas, I did Sugar Babies in Australia, many shows in Las Vegas. ![]() His milestone performance presented an occasion to interview Bracken, which I’d done three times previously. ![]() On June 1, 2001, the actor celebrated what he claimed was his 15,000th stage performance, playing the Starkeeper in a Paper Mill Playhouse production of Carousel. “I did it the hard way,” he said, “one wife.” “She was my leading lady, and has been ever since,” he once told me. ![]() He was 87, though most sources list the year of his birth as 1920 and Bracken would never confirm the date, saying, with a laugh, “I’d rather have people say, ‘Doesn’t he look wonderful?'” He was married almost 63 years to the former Connie Nickerson, who died in August they met in a tour of What a Life. Following a career of more than 70 years, Eddie Bracken died November 14 in Montclair, New Jersey. ![]()
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