Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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Famous People Column – An open Column for all writers

November 17, 2007

FAMOUS PEOPLE

Robert Goulet

1933 - 2007

Robert Goulet, who marshaled his dark good looks and thundering baritone voice to play a dashing Lancelot in the original “Camelot” in 1960, then went on to a wide-ranging career as a singer and actor, winning a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy,  has died in Los Angeles. He was 73.
 

He had been awaiting the transplant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after being found last month to have a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.

Goulet had remained in good spirits even as he waited for the transplant, said Vera Goulet, his wife of 25 years.

"Just watch my vocal cords," she said he told doctors before they inserted a breathing tube.

Goulet's long-time friend Wayne Newton said his sense of humor "kept my spirits up in some of the lowest valleys in my life."

"His incredible voice will live on in his music, and as Bob so brilliantly sang, 'There will be another song for him and he will sing it,' for God now has another singing angel by his side," Newton said in a statement.

The Massachusetts-born Goulet, who spent much of his youth in Canada, gained stardom in 1960 with "Camelot," the Lerner and Loewe musical that starred Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as his Queen Guinevere.  “Something in his voice evokes old times and romance,” Alex Witchel wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1993. “He makes you remember corsages.”

Goulet played Sir Lancelot, the arrogant French knight who falls in love with Guenevere.

He became a hit with American TV viewers with appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other programs. Sullivan labeled him the "American baritone from Canada," where he had already been a popular star in the 1950s, hosting his own TV show called "General Electric's Showtime."

The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1963 that Goulet "is popping up in specials so often these days that you almost feel he has a weekly show. The handsome lad is about the hottest item in show business since his Broadway debut."

Goulet won a Grammy Award in 1962 as best new artist and made the singles chart in 1964 with "My Love Forgive Me."

"When I'm using a microphone or doing recordings I try to concentrate on the emotional content of the song and to forget about the voice itself," he told The New York Times in 1962.   "Sometimes I think that if you sing with a big voice, the people in the audience don't listen to the words, as they should," he told the paper. "They just listen to the sound."

While he returned to Broadway only infrequently after "Camelot," he did win a Tony award in 1968 for best actor in a musical for his role in "The Happy Time." His other Broadway appearances were in "Moon Over Buffalo" in 1995 and "La Cage aux Folles" in 2005, plus a "Camelot" revival in 1993 in which he played King Arthur.

His stage credits elsewhere include productions of "Carousel," "Finian's Rainbow," "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "The Pajama Game," "Meet Me in St. Louis," and "South Pacific." Goulet also got some film work, performing in movies ranging from the animated "Gay Purr-ee" (1962) to "Underground" (1970) to "The Naked Gun 2 1/2" (1991). He played a lounge singer in Louis Malle's acclaimed 1980 film "Atlantic City."

He returned to Broadway in 2005 as one half of a gay couple in "La Cage aux Follies," and Associated Press theater critic Michael Kuchwara praised Goulet for his "affable, self-deprecating charm."

Goulet had no problems poking fun at his own fame, appearing recently in an Emerald nuts commercial in which he "messes" with the stuff of dozing office workers, and lending his name to Goulet's SnoozeBars. Goulet also has been sent up by Will Ferrell on "Saturday Night Live."

"You have to have humor and be able to laugh at yourself," Goulet said in a biography on his Web site.

The only son of French-Canadian parents, Goulet was born in Lawrence, Mass. After his father died, his mother moved the family to Canada when the future star was about 13.

He received vocal training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto but decided opera wasn't for him. He made his first professional appearance at age 16 with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. His early success on Canadian television preceded his breakthrough on Broadway.

Pianist Roger Williams said he first met Goulet when he performed on a Canadian television show.  "He appeared on the last part of the show, and I knew then that he was a tremendous talent," Williams told The Associated Press. "He could shake a room with that big beautiful voice."

In his last performance Sept. 20 in Syracuse, N.Y., the crooner was backed by a 15-piece orchestra as he performed the one-man show "A Man and his Music."

Although Goulet headlined frequently on the Las Vegas Strip, one period stood out, evidenced by a photograph that hung on his office wall. It was the mid-1970s, and he had just finished a two-week run at the Desert Inn when he was asked to fill in at the Frontier, across the street.   Overnight, the marquees of two of the Strip's hottest resorts read the same: "Robert Goulet." "I played there many, many years and have wonderful memories of the place," Goulet told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

His first two marriages ended in divorce. He had a daughter with his first wife, Louise Longmore, and two sons with his second wife, Carol Lawrence, the actress and singer who played Maria in the original Broadway production of "West Side Story."

So Mr. Goulet did not become a hit-record machine, a perennial on Broadway, a major movie star or, by his own evaluation, a finely accomplished actor. But his more than 60 albums, travels with touring theatrical revivals and many Las Vegas gigs were enough to ensure nearly a half-century of popularity.

Hart Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net