“Doin’ It For Love,” is a night of entertainment featuring the best of Broadway and New York Cabaret starring Kaye Ballard, Liliane Montevecchi, and Lee Roy Reams.
An award-winning trio of performers with centuries’ worth of dedication to the art of song and dance, drama and comedy. Listen as each one opens up about their favorite memories.
Lee Roy Reams
Lee Roy Reams is an American musical theatre actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, and director. Born in Covington, Kentucky, Reams earned a Master of Arts degree and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He made his Broadway debut in Sweet Charity in 1966.
Reams was nominated for both the Tony and Drama Desk Awards as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance in the original production of 42nd Street in 1980. He played the role of Frank Schultz in the 1989 Paper Mill Playhouse production of Show Boat, which was televised on Great Performances by PBS.
Reams has appeared on concert stages and in cabarets throughout the country. At present, he is serving as the resident director of the Theatre at Sea program sponsored by the Theatre Guild.
Kaye Ballard
Actress: Cinderella. Singing funny girl Kaye Ballard was born to perform…and perform she did, in a career spanning eight decades. With a strong comedy background and tunnel mouth to rival Martha Raye, the broad and bouncy trouper drew laughs on the musical stage, in night clubs, in recordings, and on TV.
Ballard was a colorful actress and singer with a long and distinguished career on Broadway, on television, and in film. Ballard was born Catherine Gloria Balotta in Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children born to Italian immigrant parents, Lena (née Nacarato) and Vincenzo (later Vincent James) Balotta. Her parents emigrated to the United States from Calabria, a region of southern Italy. Her siblings were Orlando, Jean, and Rosalie.
Ballard established herself as a musical comedian in the 1940s, joining the Spike Jones touring revue of entertainers. Capable of playing broad physical comedy as well as stand-up dialogue routines, she became familiar with television and stage productions.
Ballard died at her home in Rancho Mirage, California on January 21, 2019, at the age of 93. The cause was kidney cancer, according to a friend.
Liliane Montevecchi
Liliane Montevecchi was a French-Italian actress, dancer, and singer. She took her first dance classes at 8 with Pierre Duprez, primo ballerino of the Opera in Paris, France.
Along with Leslie Caron and her onetime rival, Zizi Jeanmaire, Ms. Montevecchi was part of a generation of performers who leveraged ballet success in France into wider popularity. She won the 1982 Tony for best-featured actress in a musical for her portrayal of a movie producer in “Nine” and eight years later was nominated for “Grand Hotel,” in which she played an acclaimed ballerina nearing retirement.
“Yes, there are parallels with my own life,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle of her “Grand Hotel” character. “I was a ballerina. I am the same age as the character. She declines to give age. And, yes, young men do fall in love with me.”
As a teenager, Ms. Montevecchi was a prima ballerina in choreographer Roland Petit’s dance company in Paris. She performed at the 1949 coronation of Monaco’s Prince Rainier III and initially spurned overtures to come to Hollywood, telling producer John Houseman “I want to die a dancer.”
Montevecchi had up close relationships with many of Hollywood’s leading performers, visiting Spain with Brando (“he taught me how to act”), hunting with Clark Gable, hitting the volleyball court with Gene Kelly and playing cards with Elvis Presley, her “greasy but sweet” co-star in “Kid Creole” (1958).
Liliane Montevecchi, a glittering, seemingly eternal French gamin who became a cabaret star in Paris, a pal of Marlon Brando’s in Hollywood and the Tony Award-winning “muse” of director Tommy Tune on Broadway. The French-born actress and singer died at her home in Manhattan, on June 29, 2018, she was 85.
Audio Interview with Liliane Montevecchi
Listen to our interview with the talented Liliane Montevecchi below…
