This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider.

[0:01] Kevin David Thomas: And I'm Kevin David Thomas.

[0:02] Robert W. Schneider: And this is Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[0:05] Kevin David Thomas: Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Broadway Curtain.

[0:09] Robert W. Schneider: And make sure to join our Facebook page at Behind the Curtain: Broadway's Living Legends.

[0:13] Kevin David Thomas: Our guest this week is our first guest on this podcast to hold a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most performances in the same Broadway show, that show being The Phantom of the Opera.

[0:25] Robert W. Schneider: But before he made that majestic theater his second home, he was seen in such musicals as A Little Night Music, On the 20th Century, and Merlin. And even though he may not remember Christmas, here to remember all those shows and all those people is GEORGE LEE ANDREWS.

[0:41] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Hi.

[0:42] Robert W. Schneider: George, thanks for being with us today.

[0:44] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I like for being with me. That Starting Here, Starting Now reference was nice, Rob.

[0:47] Robert W. Schneider: Well, thank you. I want to get your side of this way nice.

[0:51] Kevin David Thomas: Okay, good. Uh, dinner theater in Florida?

[0:54] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yes.

[0:55] Kevin David Thomas: Dancing on the Roof.

[0:56] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Right.

[0:56] Kevin David Thomas: The French?

[0:57] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: French mafia dancing on the roof.

[0:59] Kevin David Thomas: Wait a minute. We didn't get any dancing on the roof. Tell us about Dancing on the Roof, please.

[1:03] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Well, I had a thing where, what was it? My birthday? I have this thing where I streak on my birthday every year.

[1:13] Kevin David Thomas: In your birthday suit.

[1:14] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: In my birthday suit, yes. And imagine those poor guys at Phantom had to see that. I mean, year after year. They just couldn't wait for it, I bet. But the audience loved it. Either it was just exuberance or something, but I tried to talk those girls, Margie and Lonnie, into it. I said, oh, I know why. It was because this building was surrounded by highways. And so you could go up on the roof of this building, and it was just highways going by all around you. There was nothing close by, right directly below, just highways zooming off perfect street. And so I said, let's go up here and we need to dance naked on the roof. So would you come with me and do it? And so I talked them into it. And I think, though, that they wore cellophane bags from the costumes because they didn't want to be totally naked.

So we went up on the roof and danced a little while like that and that was it. But yes, I did go out in the lobby and start screaming while the audience was still there. Well, what happened was they had a car for us. It was like a rental car that I never used because I had my own car. The girls had it and they had a little fender bender with it. At the end of the run, they gave us our paychecks and my paycheck was they deducted from my paycheck the money to repair this car. And so I looked at that and I just went ballistic. Then I went out into the lobby while the audience was still there and started ranting and raving about this management has not paid. You just saw this show tonight, didn't you think it was a wonderful show? The management has not paid us properly for this and I just did for you.

[2:57] Kevin David Thomas: I think that's you, GEORGE. Now, where did you grow up, GEORGE?

[3:00] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

[3:01] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, and was your family involved in the theater?

[3:03] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Well, no one. My mom sang around the house continuously and I sang in church and I sang in high school. And when I got out of high school, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was in the seminary for some months and then got out of there and then I got into, there was an actor named Bobby Lee. Do you know him? Bobby Lee, he was my cousin. He had a Broadway career. And he was in the comedy with us.

[3:27] Kevin David Thomas: Oh yes.

[3:31] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And so he got me into a show. And I was talking to my dad one day, my dad was a park supervisor, and I said, Dad, why do I have this feeling about being on the stage? I really feel just really at home on the stage, but there's nothing in our past that would say anything about that. And he said, oh, didn't I ever tell you about the Lee Brothers Circus? So my dad had four brothers and in my dad's early days, he was the youngest, all those brothers were in show business. They were in all kinds of levels. They were on stage, they were stage managers, they were press agents. Even my dad rode around in train cars posting bills before shows in his younger years.

[4:17] Kevin David Thomas: Wow.

[4:18] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: So they were all involved in show business, which I never knew of because he started a new life when he got with my mom in Milwaukee. And so this was not anything ever brought up.

[4:30] Kevin David Thomas: Must have been revolutionary to you.

[4:31] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I mean, like, yeah. It was amazing. All of a sudden I thought, oh, well, I do have this in your blood, whole thing in my blood here. So there was nothing going on except church and school when I was a kid. But there was a small theater in Milwaukee called the Fred Miller Theater.

[4:47] Kevin David Thomas: Ah, the Fred Miller Theater.

[4:48] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And so right out of the seminary, I got into Song of Norway and then never looked back.

[4:48] Kevin David Thomas: Never looked back.

[4:55] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I was gonna try. I tried to go to college, but I was falling asleep during all my classes because I was doing nightclub reviews at night. I told my dad, my mom, I said I'm gonna drop out of college and I'm gonna do this theater thing because I have work right now. And then in five years I'll go back to school and if nothing's happening, I'll go back to school. And so that was the end of it, of course.

[5:22] Kevin David Thomas: Were your parents okay with you saying I'm going, I'm leaving?

[5:24] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: They were fine. They were great and my dad, but they were proud and they had a great time with it. They followed me around the country at different shows and they loved it. My dad said just do whatever you want to do, what you can do, what you love, do that.

[5:38] Kevin David Thomas: What supportive parents. Really nice to hear.

[5:42] Robert W. Schneider: So did you go to New York immediately after?

[5:42] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: No, I actually stayed out in the what you might call the hinterlands, but we didn't call them that then. I mean, it was Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, you know, it was big cities in the Midwest. And I stayed out there for really for ten years.

[5:58] Kevin David Thomas: Wow.

[5:59] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Wow.

[5:59] Kevin David Thomas: So you're a regional theater actor.

[6:01] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, and dinner theater and nightclub reviews and industrial shows and business theater, they called industrial shows in those days. And yes, I stayed out there because I was working and actually I had a, I started a family and so I didn't come to New York till I felt like I really could compete.

[6:21] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[6:22] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: You really learned everything from doing it really. And I was doing, I was able to do, I finally worked myself up into leads out there in shows, you know, and then finally did all the most wonderful shows, Carousel, Oklahoma, and all those. And did leads in those shows. So then I felt training. Okay, now I can go to New York and stand up in front of people and say, well, I already have this experience, you know, so I have some strength to work from.

[6:52] Kevin David Thomas: Hinterland.

[6:52] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, I got my equity card from a business theater and industrial show in Milwaukee and in Chicago for American Standard plumbing products.

[7:05] Kevin David Thomas: Thank you, American Standard Plumbing Products. I feel like we don't have as many of these industrials that hire equity actors that write original shows. Can you just tell us a little bit about what industrials were like?

[7:13] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Well, industrials were big time business and they were here in New York for a long time too. You know, there were shows like the Millican show and stuff that put actors to work in big shows. They were big shows and you got paid a nice amount of money. And in Chicago at the time, I did a lot of them in Chicago, Pure Oil and American Standard, as I said, and all kinds of business shows and they just kept you alive and even a little better than alive, you know, because they really paid well. And so you could go out and do, they, some of them did tours and some of them would just do one big bang up show and there were producing companies in Chicago that did these things continuously all the time.

So a lot of people were kept working. Now I've always tried to, I always tried at that time to keep working toward doing plays, shows, and but there were other ways that were keeping me alive. Like I did a lot of musical theater reviews and highlights of Broadway and hits of Broadway and blah blah blah. And I'd do those and then I got tired of, I did that in Denver for a long time and then I said I'm leaving, going to Chicago and I'm gonna do shows. So I went to Chicago, did a few shows, that dried up and then I was doing industrials and then I said I've got to get out of this industrial thing. I want to do shows. So a man named Gary Gisselman was just starting the Chan Hassan Dinner Theater in Minneapolis.

[8:53] Kevin David Thomas: Still there, still going strong.

[8:55] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And but this was its very beginnings. I did the second show there and then did all the shows for a year and a half, but I was doing shows. I think we were living in, my wife at that time, Georgia, and our young daughter Jennifer, we were living in a converted chicken barn. And we were doing, and both Georgia and I were doing shows at Chan Hassan and a year and a half of doing shows at Chan Hassan. So I was living my dream, you know. After Chan Hassan, then I went and did a couple more shows and then headed for New York. Because then I thought, okay, enough with the dinner theater, enough with this, I'm gonna go figure it out.

[9:33] Kevin David Thomas: What's the first show you got in New York?

[9:35] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Jacques Brel is Alive and Well.

[9:36] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, living in Paris.

[9:38] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And I did that at the Village Gate.

[9:40] Kevin David Thomas: Yep.

[9:40] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And then toured with it also. So that was like my first show.

[9:45] Kevin David Thomas: What was your audition song that you used a lot?

[9:47] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Uh, I had an agent who said to me, um, she called me one day and she said, I've been seeing you at auditions, and I didn't know her at the time. I've been seeing you in auditions, and you always sing Joey, Joey, Joey, and she said, I just love to hear you sing that song. Would you come in and talk to me? And I said, yeah. So she brought me in and then she was my agent for all my years, really.

[9:58] Kevin David Thomas: Wow.

[9:58] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Wow.

[9:58] Kevin David Thomas: Joey, Joey, Joey.

[10:18] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, her name was Dorothy Scott at an agency called Marge Fields.

[10:22] Kevin David Thomas: Okay. And then what came next for you after Jacques Brel?

[10:26] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: You know, I was going to say that I got my first Broadway show, which was Comedy, which in which GEORGE Irving was in the world.

[10:35] Kevin David Thomas: We would love to talk about because you met your wife there, and this some of our fans and friends may not know, but this comedy, a musical comedy was the title of it, I believe.

[10:43] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: What was the title?

[10:43] Kevin David Thomas: Uh, Comedy.

[10:45] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: No, it was called A Musical Comedia.

[10:47] Kevin David Thomas: Ah, Comedia.

[10:47] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I couldn't read the writing of playable I saw. Typical Commedia del Arte show, but set to music. And the writers were the writers who did Maggie Flynn, Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and GEORGE D. Movie.

[10:59] Kevin David Thomas: Oh, Wimway, oh Wim, although they didn't write that.

[11:04] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Right. That's right.

[11:05] Kevin David Thomas: They were suited.

[11:07] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Don't quote me.

[11:07] Kevin David Thomas: No, I read that on my allegedly.

[11:09] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And they wrote Can't Help Falling in Love and Maggie Flynn, if anyone knows that. No, they were big pop writers.

[11:13] Kevin David Thomas: Oh yeah, yeah.

[11:14] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: So what was, uh, David Weiss and well we, you know, it was, uh, first of all, every great comedic character actor in New York was in that show because they were all the Commedia characters.

[11:26] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[11:26] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And we were the young lovers, my wife now, Marty, and I and a girl named Sue Ellen Estee, who's still working a lot, and Jack Witham, who's married to Beth Fowler, who I just saw at Pat Elliott's memorial the other day. And, uh, but so, you know, all these friends are still kind of close, you know, not close, but friends, still friends.

[11:56] Kevin David Thomas: And we should, I'm so sorry, we should mention really quickly that GEORGE's wife is Marty Morris, who is in her own right is a brilliant actress as well.

[12:05] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, yeah. Um, who were some of the comedians or Commedia players?

[12:11] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Joe Bova, Joe Sakari, Jerry Soroka, Diane Findlay, GEORGE S. Irving, Bill McCutcheon. Thank you, thank you. Bill McCutcheon. And there were more too. Frank Vose, a good group of people. Well, they were amazing. And, uh, as I mentioned earlier, the director and writer, uh, his name was Larry Carras, and he was from Carnegie Tech, and he was a world-famous authority on Commedia, and so he wrote this show, put it together, got these guys to write the music for it, and then he directed it. But he was a little sketchy, he was quite old at the time, and as I mentioned before, there were times in rehearsal where we would have a run-through in front of him and he would nod off.

[13:07] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: You know, and we don't want to see that happening with a comedy show.

[13:12] Kevin David Thomas: Not a good sign.

[13:13] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I mean that's right. And uh so he directed the show, so it was interesting because we went up to Boston and we tried out in Boston and Colonial, yeah. He would these great character actors who already were huge and had big careers and were well known in the New York theater, he would get us all out on stage and start ranting and raving about do I have to teach you people how to do comedy? Do I have to go back to comedy one oh one here? You're making a big mess on the stage. You know, and he just was ranting all these guys would just kind of sit there and look at each other and take this, you know. But the show he couldn't get it put together properly, and so it uh it folded in in Boston at the Colonial Theater.

[13:58] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah. But the interesting thing was before, while I was doing comedy in New York, while I while we were rehearsing comedy in New York, Hal Prince was auditioning for A Little Night Music. And he was looking for they he had it pretty well cast, but they were looking for this character of Fred. And uh at that time uh Frid was rather an important character and he had a big song. And and but he was supposed to be at that time they saw him as an American who was observing the Swedish people. Oh, I think that's why he sang "Silly People" about them. Yeah. And uh because he was supposed to be a kind of a wise American lad. Commenting on it. Yeah, who was working in Sweden at the time or something like that.

So yeah. So he was an American, and so they were Hal was looking for this certain person to do this role. And he couldn't find him. I knew of guys who had auditioned for this role like ten times they had been brought in in over the last you know, or maybe it was four times over the last ten months. But he was looking for that character and never found anybody who fit his idea. He has a certain idea of what he wants. And so he told Joanna Merlin, his casting director. We just talked to you the other day, actually, yeah. He said, Joanna, uh I'm not seeing what I need here for this. So go back to your files. I've seen everybody, go back to your files, go dig in your files and see what you can find for me, because we've got I've got to see more I've got to see some other people for this.

So she went back in her files. I'm way back in her file somewhere in the back. She pulls me out, she calls my agent and she says, It's is GEORGE in town, because he's never in town. Uh whenever I call you for him to come and audition, he's never in town. Because I was out trying to make a buck. Right. Yeah. And and you do. So I was out in New York a lot, although I lived here. And my agent said, actually he is in town. And Joanna said, Well, can I want him to come? Is he doing anything right now? And she said, Yeah, he's rehearsing um this uh comedy show. Yep. And Joanna said, Oh, well, Hal, Hal hates that. He's not he doesn't ever want to not he hates comedy, he hates pulling people who are already working out of a show.

He doesn't ever want to do that. As a matter of fact, Marty was supposed to have an audition for for A Little Night Music, and she told Joanna that she was doing this comedy show, and Joanna said, Well, Hal will not is not gonna see you then.

[16:35] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Wow. So she didn't get seen for this, but they were looking for this guy, and Joanna said, Well, Hal's gonna want to know that if she likes GEORGE, you he's gonna be able to have him. And and Dorothy, my agent, said, Oh, don't worry, if he gets Night Music, he'll jump out of comedy because he's on only a four-week in comedy, so a four-week out in comedy. So you don't have to worry about that. So Joanna says, Okay, uh, bring him in. So I'm during a rehearsal day for comedy, I went over and auditioned, and they were looking for an American, and at this time I was really kind of like a cowboy personally. I was like a cowboy. I wore cowboy boots, I wore Levi's, I wore uh probably a cowboy shirt, and I had kind of longish hair, and and I just looked like a kind of a cowboy hippie.

And I got up on stage and I sang, "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" for my audition. I didn't know they were looking for an American or anything like that. But they're looking at me, and all of a sudden, oh, they want an American? Here's a cowboy who's singing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" for us, you know. So I sang for them.

[17:45] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And on stage, you said. I love that. I love that.

[17:48] Kevin David Thomas: Back back when auditions were on stage.

[17:50] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah. Well, these were like in callback times. So I sang for them. I went back to rehearsal. I got a call later. Dorothy says, They want you to come back this afternoon. Can you come back this afternoon? And I said, Yeah, I'll just make it a I'll I'll get out of here somehow and I'll go back. So I went back the same afternoon and sang again for them and left. And my agent called me later that day and said, You've got it. You're doing it. Wow. You're doing Night Music. An audition and a callback in the same day, bam. Bango. It was just Hal said And cast.

[18:21] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah. Audition callback.

[18:27] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yes. Yeah. No, really. It was like wham bam. And uh, but Hal had saw something and said, Okay, let's go with this, you know. And so I went back and had to tell Marty that I was doing Night Music, and she said, How can you you can't do Night Music? And I said, actually, yeah, I'm doing Night Music. And she said, Oh, I auditioned for that. And they wouldn't know, they wouldn't let me audition for that. So, but we did it together later, of course.

[18:55] Kevin David Thomas: Of course.

[18:55] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: We did the tour together, and we did it in Arizona together. We did it. But uh, so that was my first intro to Hal. And that was like life changing, of course.

[19:07] Kevin David Thomas: Well, so tell us about the rehearsal process of what has become a masterpiece in the American musical theater.

[19:14] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: You mean Night Music?

[19:16] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[19:20] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yes. Yeah, uh it was very uh actually um I said a few words at this Pat Elliott uh memorial, who of course won the Tony for the Countess. That's right. Just passed away in the last couple of months. And uh she was, of course, brilliant. And it was a very and what I wanted to say when I s said my words about the Night Music time was that it was a very heady time. And all of a sudden we were in the midst of the Broadway, the real Broadway, the the you know, the most incredible Broadway situation, and dealing with people, seeing people, Comden and Green, Julie Stein, uh, you know, Steven Sondheim, going to parties at their house, going to parties at at Hal's house, and and but not only not only the parties, but just the work, just going to work every day and seeing those people work and seeing this this show come together.

And of course, you know, it's one of the most beautiful, brilliant shows. So to be working on it was uh a huge thrill. And since I was Fred, it was very it was a very it was not an easy show to work on because uh at that time Hal was sometimes difficult to work with uh because he wanted things a certain way, and this had to do with really that he was producing that show, as he had done all the shows up until that point. And so he was hard on people.

[20:56] Kevin David Thomas: How so?

[20:59] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Just you know, he was difficult. He was he was not happy go lucky and having fun so much as getting what he wanted and getting what he needed. And so he was he was rather difficult on people. I didn't have that problem because I my part in the show was rather small, so small that I was more I could be more like an observer.

[21:23] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[21:24] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: But the young actors and the new actors in in uh l like um you know, like Pat who this was her Broadway debut, and Vicky Mallory and Mark Lambert and and Larry Guitar and people like that, uh it was sometimes hard on them to come to work because Hal was very strict and very difficult.

[21:45] Kevin David Thomas: When when in rehearsals did your character change?

[21:48] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: When did it go from being an American outsider to I it actually had changed before we went into rehearsal. He had become he became Swedish.

[21:58] Kevin David Thomas: And and uh with the cowboy hat though, yeah.

[22:01] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yes, yes. So I didn't wear cowboy boots in the show anymore. But uh so he became Swedish, but and uh uh the interesting part of that was Stephen had written more than one group of songs for this show. He wrote a whole group of rather dark Chacovian songs originally for the show, and Hal listened to those songs and like there was a song "Two Fairy Tales," which you know about and there were other songs, and in talking with Hal Half on they said, No, this is not this is too dark. We have to light it has to lighten up. It's not gonna fly if it's not it doesn't have a lightness and like a bubble, like a sham like a champagne bubble. It's gotta be like that, you know. So he said, So these songs, they're not can you do some more different songs where the show will be lighter and and so he did that and as the time went on, the only song that was left in the show from the earlier score from the earlier music was "Silly People."

[23:07] Kevin David Thomas: Wow.

[23:08] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Rather dark song. And dark in its underpinnings. I mean, in the orchestration you can hear it on the the Sondheim uh tribute album.

[23:17] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[23:18] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And uh that brilliant, brilliant orchestration by Jonathan Toonick. Stephen really wanted still wanted to keep that song in the show. They wanted that song in the show, but they had "Send in the Clowns" and they had "The Miller's Son" and all these songs were right in the second act. And all of a sudden you got a guy coming out singing a rather large song. You don't even know this guy. You know? True. He's the butler. You know, he's not any kind of a major character in the show. So they just were like, you know, we can't have this guy singing this big song at the end of the show uh toward the end of the show. So and but Stephen would say, Yeah, but we need this song. I want this song in the show.

I want it in the show. So it stayed in the show for three weeks. I knew they tried to keep working it a certain way, make it very sexy or make it they tried to do different things with it, and so I could feel that they were working on it to try to make it work properly.

[24:15] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[24:16] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: But I wasn't surprised when after three weeks of doing it in the show they cut it.

[24:21] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[24:22] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Which left me with opening in on Broadway, my Broadway debut in a Stephen Sondheim show, not singing a note.

[24:31] Kevin David Thomas: Really?

[24:31] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I didn't sing anything else in the show, just that song.

[24:34] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah. Now, most of your scenes were with Hermione Gingold, is that right?

[24:38] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yes.

[24:38] Kevin David Thomas: What was it like working with her?

[24:40] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Oh, Hermione Gingold, I always say that if I would have been smart, I would have taken notes when I from the first day of rehearsal when I started working with, first of all, the show itself, but if I could have just even just taken notes on Hermione, I would have had a book. A really wonderful, funny book, because she was brilliant and in her kinky, crazy way, and she had a kind of wit like the old time like the Lunts and Noel Coward and those people. You could feel, oh, these people are working on a different level in terms of the wit, you know.

[25:30] Kevin David Thomas: Totally.

[25:30] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: They're amazing. And and Hermione was of that group. And and so she was just continually quipping through the through the rehearsal period, through the show, saying things, and a lot of times under her breath, and then it got to and and and then if I would laugh, because I was standing next to her all the time as her butler. Yeah, if I would laugh, then she'd say it out loud. You know, I was her I was the out-of-town tryout.

[26:01] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And uh she would just uh come up with brilliant things continuously, and I mostly laughed at all of it, really.

[26:10] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And um, but I spent a good amount of time with her, and she was lovely. Oh, when I lost my song, when I lost silly people, um, it was an interesting day.

[26:21] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: We would all come into the audience and get notes from the show the night before. And so Larry Guettard had been waiting for his new song, which was in Praise of Women. Until that time, he was singing a song called Bang. And he was just waiting for this new song to be given to him, continued every day. Finally, all of a sudden, Stephen comes in with Larry's new song. So I sit down in the audience with Larry next to Larry, and he says, Look, I got my new song. And he puts his song in my lap. And I'm looking at him praise of women, and he's looking over my shoulder. And all of a sudden Hal walks in to start the stuff to start the note session, and he says, Well, the bad news for today is we're going to do the show tonight without silly people.

And silence and Larry, because everybody knows everybody knew what this meant to me. And Larry le looks over at me and he reaches over and takes his song back and he says, Poor baby. Puts the song on it back on his lap. And um, I just saw Larry the other day at this at the memorial. Lovely, lovely man. And uh so that was but I like wasn't surprised or I thought, okay, it's the axe has finally fallen. But everyone was very sad. So we went I went then he went through the rest of the notes and he called some people up on stage to work on something. And I was in that, but I wasn't on stage right away. So I went around uh onto the stage area and I sat uh almost on the floor, like on a rail, a small rail, just at the side of the stage, alone, thinking, okay.

And Hermione comes and comes, is walking past me, and all of a sudden she looks over and she sees me sitting down there, and she comes over and sits down on the floor with me, and just sits down down there with me, and finally she looks over at me and she says, You know, in this business you have to be like a rubber ball. They bounce you down, and you have to just bounce right up again. And then she gets up and walks away. That's great. And that was so lovely and uh uh so amazing for her to be that uh commiseratory. Yeah, is that a word? Yeah, and just uh good advice for this whole business. It's really truly it's the advice for this business. It really is. And uh but we remained uh really good pals for all the time we we we spent together. She was that's special. She was an amazing, amazing woman.

[29:04] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Came time for the auditions for the tour, and I thought to myself, there's nothing really for me in the tour. I'm I'm I'm not right for Carl Magnus. I'm too young for Frederick, I'm too, you know, so there's I'm not I'm too old for Henrik. I can't s couldn't sing it anyway, because it's that tenary craziness. And so I thought, but it's important, I think, to go up and stand in front of Hal and try and do something. So I put my name down to try for Carl Magnus because I thought never he'll never cast me as Carl Magnus, but I'm I gotta know put my name down somewhere to do it. So I signed up and I went out for my audition. I had an audition, and I went out and I sang whatever it was I sang for Hal, and Joanna Merlin comes backstage and she says, Hal wants to see you for Frederick.

I said, What? For Frederick? I was 30. And and uh Jean Simmons was in her late 40s. And what? So she said, Yeah, he wants to see you for Frederick. So come back next week and age up a little bit, age up a little bit. And think of yourself as Frederick and come back in because he wants to see you for Frederick. I said, okay. So I went the next week, I put on a suit, not cowboy boots. I put on a suit, a tie, I put a little gray in my hair, you know, a little gray in my mustache or whatever. And uh I went out and sang for Frederick and walked off stage, and I'm standing around backstage, and all of a sudden Hal g comes backstage and says, It's yours. And so I got Frederick for the tour. He went back to the office and he said, GEORGE LEE ANDREWS is doing Frederick, and everybody was like, What?

He he's too young, he can't do he can't do Frederick, and Hal said, No, no, it's gonna be great, don't worry about it, it's fine. So you do the tour with Gene Simmons, and you're playing Frederick. Um, and then you come back to New York. What's what's next for you when you come back? Nothing much happened after the tour. I mean, Marty and I were on the tour for over a year, and we came back. There was nothing. I hadn't been in New York to audition for anything, so there was really nothing. I went, she uh actually went off to do um night music in in Falmouth Mass with Patrice Munsell as Anne. And I went out and visited my earlier family uh in Denver, and uh all of a sudden, oh no we went to we took our money that we earned on the tour and we went to Europe for six weeks.

Oh that's good for you and we just bummed around Europe we had a blast kind of a uh a pre-honeymoon because we hadn't been married yet but yeah we had a Hal has been my guiding star you know Hal Prince has been my guiding star through these through m my New York years in the theater. I just lucked into that thing right place at the right time so important in theater and it just you gotta if you love theater you gotta wait for it and hopefully it's gonna happen to you sometime around the corner but uh Joanna Merlin pulled out my thing from the back of her file and I happen to be in town yeah and I happen to be available and I happen to be a cowboy and you know so I got on this lovely Harold Prince train and then you know Hal is in a lot of ways taken care of me and really not the least of which I mean there were long periods when I didn't work for him but then always something would pop up like I did as we talked about Starting Here Starting Now and then at the opening night party for Starting Here Starting Now Hal came up to me and said ah I'm doing we're doing on the 20th century and there's a part in it for you.

And I'm like yes because I'm because I was making four cents doing Starting Here's right now and I had a family starting and but then so then I got that show and then of course, you remember how Hal Prince came backstage and said, It's yours.

[33:19] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah. Well, then everybody's auditioning, everybody in the whole town are auditioning for Phantom of the Opera. And I had been out I'd already worked for Hal, of course, a lot, but I was out in the Hinterlands doing something else, I don't know what for a long time. Got back in the city, walking on Columbus Avenue at a fair. I we run into Judy Prince and Daisy Prince and was, Hey, how are you doing? It's great to see you. Yeah, I haven't seen you in a long time. Yeah. What's Hal doing? And Judy said, You don't know? And I said, No, we've been out of town. And she's like, Well, last night, Hal opened a Phantom of the Opera in London, and it's the biggest hit in London theatrical history. It's the very biggest hit.

And I'm like, Oh my God, that's brilliant. That's the first I had heard anything about Phantom of the Opera. I said, That's brilliant, that brilliant. So we talked with them a little bit, but then a year later comes down the pike and they're auditioning for the show here. Go to the auditions, get an audition, go to the auditions. We walk in the audition, Marty and I, because Marty plays for me at my auditions. And every character actor in New York is in that theater to audition for Phantom of the Opera because everyone knows Phantom of the Opera is definitely going to be a hit and it's gonna run maybe five years, maybe you know, maybe three, you know. It's gonna be yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a hit.

So we want into this show. So I auditioned with all these amazing, I mean amazing actors there. And and uh I sang something, and Hal said, Way uh from way back in the audience, I know that Cameron McIntosh, ANDREWS Lloyd Weber, they're all out there and they're d talking and how just wait a minute, wait a minute, just stay there. And I'm hearing them out there, and hearing Hal saying something, no, no, you this this is the thing. He's going to done and he'll do this. And I think they were saying, Yeah, but no, the this part that he's auditioning for, which was Donatilio, the old guy in the in the comedy comedia, not the comedia, the Mozart opera. He's he in London, he was the understudy for the phantom.

He was the the understudy for the phantom. So they're saying, No, if this role has to understudy the phantom, you know, which I couldn't do because it's out of my range. And Hal saying, No, no, don't worry about that. We'll let me have him, he can understudy the managers, and then we'll have someone else understudy. In fact, I've got the person understudy the phantom. And so he Hal engineered this, you know, so that I could get in this thing. And then he says, He I'm standing uh up on stage waiting, and finally, all of a sudden Hal gets up and toddles down to the very edge of the stage and says, Come here, I really want to get you in this show. And I'm like, Yes. I do too. Yes, yes. So I walk off stage and tell Marty this, and she's like, Oh, holy cow.

So I get in the show, and then not only does he get me in the show, but he keeps me in the show, which to tell you the truth, the London, the producers, Cameron Macintosh, the way they work is, and this is true, especially in London, they don't like anybody to stay in a show for more than two years, anybody in Leeds, because they feel they made a blanket decision that th those people get stale. So in London, you don't stay in a show for longer than two years. You get in a show and that's it. So they wanted to do that in New York too. But ha Hal considered the New York company of Phantom to be his his and that he would have final say in it. And that's the way he because he said, No, this this New York company, that's my company.

And so throughout the years that I was in Phantom Cameron McIntosh and the Brits really wanted to clean house and wanted to get rid of people. In fact, they went through a big thing about in about the seventh year. No, it was about the tenth year. Where they said where they said, okay, no, we've got to get everybody that's been in the show for more than seven years has got to go. Well. He did it with Le Miz, I remember. Yes. Famously. Yes, but uh but actually Le Miz deserved it at that time because it was kind of a mess. All the schoolboys were like 45. But Phantom was Phantom has always been clean and strong and amazing. Yeah. Right through the run. So they said this to Hal, and Hal said, I don't know.

I don't want to do that. I don't want to get rid of people. And Kristen Blodgett said to him. Well, you know, I was playing Fear Matt at that time, the the more dour of the managers. Kristen said, Well, you know, GEORGE should be playing Andre. And Hal's like, That's it. We'll switch 'em. We'll switch 'em. We'll we'll switch the two managers and that'll shut those people up in London. And so that's what we'll do. So let's go into rehearsal now. Put them, put those guys into rehearsal, and then we'll switch them in the roles. And then uh so they did that and we went in they were getting rid of other people, you know, they were people who were losing their jobs that didn't really need to be losing their jobs, but they were.

[38:57] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And we rehearsed, and then we had a run through on the stage, a dress run through, with us in the opposite in the other parts, and we finished the run through, and we all stopped and we looked at Hal, and he looks up at the stage and he says, "Oh my god, missed cast for ten years."

[39:18] Kevin David Thomas: That's awesome.

[39:19] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: It's amazing. And so then we did so then so I did the one manager for ten years, and then I did the other manager for ten years, and they kept trying to get rid of me.

[39:30] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And Hal just would say, "No, no, I like the show to be the way I want it, and I like to come back after not being there for a year, and the show being in the shape that I left today. I don't want to have to go in and try to teach somebody new the show again. The I George knows what I want, he knows what I know what he's doing, I want him to stay."

[39:52] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: So then it got close to the twenty-fifth anniversary, and Cameron just finally put his foot down and said and Hal fought it. I know he did. People told me they said Hal really is really upset about this, and he really fought to not have you be going. But uh finally Cameron said, "No, I want to do this because I want to really be able to advertise that it's a whole new thing for the twenty fifth anniversary." And then they were lovely about how they let me go.

[40:22] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, and I walked out of the office after not being renewed, and had no idea that this was going to happen. And I was like mad for like two hours. And then after two hours I was like, "Wait a minute, what am I mad about? This is this is fine. This is great. You know, get me out of there. Let me go on and do something else and get get going and 'cause this has been my idea of what this has been is a huge huge gift."

[40:55] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Oh yeah. Which of course it was. Oh yeah. But I loved it the whole way through.

[41:00] Kevin David Thomas: How many performances did you play? Because there is you are on the Guinness Book of World Records. That is incredible.

[41:04] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah I think it's if you got it right here actually nine thousand eight hundred and three hundred and no yeah nine. Yeah in eighty-two. Nine thousand three hundred and eighty two. That's what the Wikipedia says.

[41:17] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: That's that's right. Over twenty three years. As right as it can be yeah twenty three and three quarters. And who have the record before you Mary and Seldies?

[41:26] Kevin David Thomas: No serious series?

[41:27] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah yeah I already I was back trap. Yeah. I think um I yes I think so that's yeah but not as long as that. But no there was I'll do twenty three. Yeah we'll throw down the gauntlet.

[41:45] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah well the reason you could say you know the reason there was no question about whether that had I had done that or not was simply because no show had ever been on Broadway longer than that. Yeah and I was in every one of those shows that it was on Broadway. So that's why that all fell into place, you know.

[42:03] Kevin David Thomas: And so were you no, so you weren't able to take a you weren't really able to do any other projects or...

[42:03] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, I could have done other projects. They were they were okay about if you came to them and said, "I could would there be a chance to do this?" Not another, probably another well, even then maybe another possible Broadway tryout or a Broadway show. You know, you could get you could get a leave of absence, but you know, uh I was so happy with where I was and so happy with being able to step out on that stage every night in that wonderful part in that brilliant show with every night a full audience, you know, every night loves it. Full house who is ready to eat it up, yeah, and who's been waiting to get there to see it and so excited about seeing it. That's what you walk out into every night in the show.

[42:55] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, and it's a great show. It just seamlessly put together by Hal and and uh in that gorgeous Maria Bjornsson setting and costumes. And so I was like, "Well, what am I w why am I trying to find anything else? You know, I'm I'm not the kind of guy who gets tired or bored. That's not that's why I've been able to stay in live theater and do like I said, eight shows a week for fifty years, is because my approach was always stay right alive in the show when you're there and on the stage."

[43:35] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And not only that, just try to improve every night. You can always improve. You can improve vocally, you can improve dance wise, you can improve acting wise, and let try to make the comedy work better, you know, let something fall, because that always changes and the audience always changes. And there was nothing about the situation that was unhappy. I will say that I went through some periods of physical, it was physically hard because I had hurt myself or something, or and also there were times when it was mentally hard.

[44:06] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[44:06] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: But I always worked through those and knew that I could work through those and allowed myself to work through those. Knew that there was the other side where all of a sudden you come out free again. And um, so that's always how I approached it. So I was never in any kind of need to get out and do something.

[44:27] Kevin David Thomas: Sure.

[44:27] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And also really to be to tell you the truth, I had two lovely kids who were in school. They when I started Phantom, they were six and ten. So they were just starting their big school situation. Yeah. I could be in New York, I could pay my bills, I could walk them to school every day, I could be with my family and not have to go anywhere else to do anything. And uh, you know, I was in just in kind of a a little bit of heaven, so I stayed there.

[44:59] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And then uh Kristen Blodgett again, who's you know, another lovely friend and uh mentor. Yes. She texted me one day, just like a month or so after, and said, you know, we're here auditioning for Evita. I'm here with Michael Grandage, and and we're we're saying that you know what we really need in this part, we need a a GEORGE LEE ANDREWS voice. Uh titled but GEORGE LEE ANDREWS voice said all of a sudden I thought to myself, "Well, hell, let's call GEORGE LEE ANDREWS. Because I know he's not I he's not doing anything right now. So would you like to come in and then ended up doing that lovely, really brilliant of Evita."

[45:53] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: It's a testament of relationships too, how important relationships are in this business. You know, and then I did I did that and did it for a year and danced. Yeah. That was a dance show. And and I had really had to dance. Nice. And uh that was amazing. And that cast I mean, I'm still close with my people from Phantom, but this Vita cast glommed on to each other, and we all we have a thread on Facebook and we're always talking to each other and we're getting together. We get together for reunions all the time and talk to each other and you know, so it's very close. But uh so then there was that. And that's and it was refreshing too, probably to do something that wasn't you know well, another Angeloid Weber, but different.

[46:44] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I have to ask you, after you left Phantom, did you ever go back and see it? Did you ever go as an audience member?

[46:48] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah, yeah. Is that surreal?

[46:52] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: No, I went back the night after I the night after I left uh uh the next night my uh my son in law Aaron was in my part. His son in law took over. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that poetic from my part? And uh and keep it in the family. That's just incredible. And then he did it for like a year and a couple of months.

[47:13] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah. Did you give him any notes?

[47:16] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: No.

[47:18] Kevin David Thomas: That's right.

[47:20] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: I don't think so.

[47:21] Kevin David Thomas: George.

[47:22] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: That's right. I don't need to give any notes.

[47:22] Kevin David Thomas: That's really cool.

[47:22] Kevin David Thomas: One of the things that uh GEORGE and I like to do is we do a little word association. We might bring up something and just you know, a memory or an anecdote. Uh Merlin.

[47:30] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: What I love about Merlin is that you can see the opening number on Blue Gobo.

[47:36] Kevin David Thomas: Yes.

[47:36] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And on YouTube.

[47:37] Kevin David Thomas: That's right.

[47:38] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah. And and uh and it's really kind of amazing. And that was such a that was a lot of fun. And but they couldn't figure out what to do with it. And so we like previewed for like eight months. You know, and finally the all the critics got together and said, "No, you have to open this because you're charging full price and you're calling it previews or you're whatever they were doing. And so you have to open it." So finally, we went through so many, we went through four or five choreographers, four or five directors, and finally, uh, and I played this old Merlin character. I played Doug Henning as an as an old Merlin. Christian Slater was Doug Henning as a young Merlin. Keeps coming up in our conversations with people and so uh so I was this old Merlin character, so Ivan Reitman, the great Ivan Reitman, uh director of Ghostbusters and blah blah blah.

He finally took over as director. He was producer, and he finally took over as director. He said, "No, I'm gonna I'm taking over as director now." So he took over and he said, "We're gonna have a big new opening number, and it's gonna be and and GEORGE is gonna sing it." So all of a sudden I got to be I got to do the opening number, be the main character in the opening number, and like introduce the show. Brilliant.

[49:01] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And it's a fun opening number, by the way. Great opening. And Marty was in it too.

[49:04] Kevin David Thomas: Yeah.

[49:05] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Oh, yeah. That's awesome. And so that's what's on so that was on the Tony's. So that's what's on Blue Gobo. So you can still see that.

[49:11] Kevin David Thomas: We'll post it, yeah, we'll post it on our Facebook. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

[49:18] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: Yeah.

[49:18] Kevin David Thomas: I was going to say you're the luckiest man, but you're also you're so talented. It it explains why you get so many great things. And it's yeah, I it's amazing. I mean lucky, yeah. Really. Really big time lucky.

[49:32] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: But as you say, you gotta be able that's the thing, you know, you say to people, okay, people say, well what how do you do it in this business? Well, you gotta be lucky and you gotta sometimes wait for that luck. So but you also have to be ready when the luck clicks to be able to capitalize on it. You gotta be able to walk into it and say and make it work then for you. So you it's not just that you're gonna walk into something out of nowhere and be lucky in the right place at the right time, but you also then be able to have to be able to stand up and be able to take that responsibility.

[50:07] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: That's why probably I always felt it was smart to learn a whole bunch of stuff about myself as a performer and as a leading performer for ten years outside of New York.

[50:20] Kevin David Thomas: Right.

[50:21] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And get those jobs under my belt so that when I came to New York and someone said okay Jacques Brell or someone said okay, you know, this or whatever, you know, that I was able to step up and say, "Okay I can actually do this, you know I've I've learned how to do this." So but it's but yeah I can't I mean I can't discount uh the beauty of the luck I've had and you know, getting in close to Hal and having the luck for him to enjoy what I do so that he could keep using me. You know, keep putting me to work. You know, I mean that's it's all a matter of its art, it's a matter of taste. So if he you know if it turned out that he didn't get off on me as a person or performer, then none of that would have happened either. It's a crapshoot.

[51:13] Kevin David Thomas: But well, I will say this. I I think that we are the lucky ones for you know, we've gotten to enjoy your performances for so many years, and I'm so happy so much of your work is preserved on video and YouTube, and it's a great resource for a lot of our younger listeners to get exposed to the brilliance of GEORGE. And we can't wait to see more.

[51:31] GEORGE LEE ANDREWS: And we can't wait to see more.

[51:34] Kevin David Thomas: Join us next week when our guest is everybody's favorite game show host and Broadway icon Peter Marshall.