{"id":573,"date":"2009-07-11T23:03:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-12T03:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clients.chrisvanpatten.com\/theatreaficionado.com\/2009\/07\/tony-awards-tribute-to-robert-preston.html"},"modified":"2009-07-11T23:03:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-12T03:03:00","slug":"tony-awards-tribute-to-robert-preston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"Tony Awards Tribute to Robert Preston"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The theatre world lost one of its brightest stars in 1987 when two-time Tony winner Robert Preston died of lung cancer. Preston, a character actor who worked steadily in mostly B-pictures was turned into a major star when he originated the part of Harold Hill in <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">The Music Man, <\/span>leading the 39 year old actor onto a new career path as musical theatre leading man. Not bad for a person who&#8217;d never sung before in his life.<\/p>\n<p>The year of his death, the Tony Awards brought two of his leading ladies, Barbara Cook (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">The Music Man, <\/span>1957<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">) <\/span>and Bernadette Peters<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"> <\/span>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mack and Mabel, <\/span>1974) onstage in a tribute to their leading man, followed by a rendition of &#8220;76 Trombones&#8221; led by a chorus and an enormous marching band. Incidentally, Angela Lansbury, the host for the evening, costarred with Preston in the 1960 film adaptation of <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/DmEyx9ZN2uY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/DmEyx9ZN2uY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The theatre world lost one of its brightest stars in 1987 when two-time Tony winner Robert Preston died of lung cancer. Preston, a character actor who worked steadily in mostly B-pictures was turned into a major star when he originated the part of Harold Hill in The Music Man, leading the 39 year old actor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=573\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tony Awards Tribute to Robert Preston<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1598,1616,1672,2275],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-angela-lansbury","tag-barbara-cook","tag-bernadette-peters","tag-robert-preston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}