September 27, 2025 • 23 mins
Ben Vereen is widely considered one of the greatest modern showmen — a true song-and-dance force.
But behind the fame is a dance story that’s never been fully told. From gospel quartets and Brooklyn dance studios to the moment Bob Fosse took a chance on him — and kept returning, again and again — this episode uncovers how Vereen’s artistry was built long before the spotlight.
He stole the spotlight in Pippin, broke hearts in Jesus Christ Superstar, became a household name in Roots, and closed All That Jazz in unforgettable style.
And now, for the first time, you’ll hear the dance beginnings, mentors, and turning points that shaped his rise into superstardom.
Check out my Return to Dance docuseries!
Support my Instagram — where I post daily dance inspo, insights and fun! @backtogreat
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:02):
He was a dancer who refused to be contained, reshaping what it meant to be a song and danceman in modern times.
Hey there! Welcome to the rest of the story, my weekly series on dance legends on my podcast, Hey Dancer.
I'm your host, Miller Daurey, and if you're loving this ongoing exploration of dancers who changed the game,
(00:25):
make sure you are subscribed or following along wherever you're watching or listening and do all the engagement stuff.
Like, comment, share because it lets the platform know I'm doing something right.
And that means a lot to me to help get these inspiring stories in front of more people.
Now as I often say, this is a dance centered podcast.
(00:47):
So yeah, while our subject today has an exceedingly versatile career, we're focused mostly on the dance.
Okay, 5, 6, 7, 8, let's begin.
He was born on October 10th, 1946 in Dade County, Florida.
At the time, his parents were barely getting by on low-paying jobs,
(01:07):
but within months, they joined the Great Migration, the wave of black families leaving the south in search of better opportunities.
They landed in Bedford, Stivocent, an integrated neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
His father, James, found steady work at the gypsy paint factory.
His mother, Pauline, became a wardrobe attendant in a local theater,
(01:29):
did made work and to further make ends meet, she also took in foster children.
For this boy, that meant a home that was always full of new faces.
He sometimes felt confused by the comings and goings, but as an only child, he also enjoyed the companionship.
And through it all, his mother made it clear that her bunny, as she called him, was special.
(01:52):
His godmother, Mary Eddie, taught him to sing.
She wasn't just family, she was the one who gave him his first real training,
leading him into her group, the Mary Eddie Vagabond Missionaries of Fulton and Herkamer Streets.
By 7, a family friend had taken him to a Pentecostal church,
where the worship wasn't polite or restrained.
(02:14):
It was clapping, stomping, voices lifted until the room shook.
He soaked it in, that sense of release of testifying through sound and movement.
And he wasn't just listening, he was already singing.
In Brooklyn, he joined a gospel quartet with the unforgettable name,
the sensational twilight of Brooklyn.
(02:34):
They sang in churches around the neighborhood, moving congregations to tears,
women literally crying in the pews when his young voice soared.
But music wasn't his only fascination.
Across the street from his home sat a shoe shine parlor called tip tap and toe.
The men who ran it had once been Vodville performers.
(02:57):
On Sundays, they would shine shoes, play jazz and break into tap.
He called it his very first introduction to dance,
standing there on the sidewalk, taking it all in.
Then when he was about eight, a salesman knocked at the family's door.
He was promoting the star-time dance studio.
(03:17):
To test the boy, he bent his leg back toward his head,
stretched him this way and that way, he remembers wanting to smack the man.
But the salesman turned to his mother and said,
"The boy is a born dancer."
His mother didn't hesitate.
She enrolled him at star-time.
He remembers the teacher reading steps from a Fred Astaire dance studio book.
(03:42):
By the time he was 10, he was already on neighborhood stages.
Variety shows in Brooklyn, touring hospitals to entertain patients.
His first pay job came at the Ebenezer Baptist Church,
dancing for the Lady's auxiliary fashion show for five dollars.
His mother kept pushing.
Finally, she placed him at the Green Dance Studio in Brooklyn under Dale Green,
(04:06):
a teacher who demanded more than steps.
The boy was taught culture and etiquette too.
By the time he reached Junior High at PS178 in Brooklyn,
he was ready for something bigger.
Dr. Hill, one of his teachers, cast him in an all-African-American production
of The King and I at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
(04:27):
This wasn't a church basement or a neighborhood stage.
It was costumes, lights, and a real paying audience.
His principal, Benjamin Raskin, saw the spark and told him
to audition for the high school of performing arts.
So he listened and showed up for the audition in Bermuda Shorts,
(04:48):
a t-shirt, a pair of Keds, and his father's skinny brim hat.
Other kids were polished, already trained,
moving to Chopin, dancing Balanchine combinations,
but he dropped the needle on a Quincy Jones record.
Killer Joe and did what he knew.
Afterward, he learned who had been on the judging panel.
(05:10):
He danced for Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine.
But he wasn't intimidated.
In his own words, I had no idea of these people
who had carved the world of dance into our culture.
And they clearly saw his potential.
He got in.
On the first day of school, they had everyone line up
(05:32):
and then changed into their dance clothes, which he did.
But then he also put on his suit back over his dance clothes,
because that's how he was raised.
You don't walk around in what feels like your underwear.
So when he arrived to class, the teacher asked
if he was taking class in his suit, he said,
"Yes, she asked, but where's your dance clothes?"
(05:54):
And he whispered, "Under my suit."
She told him that he couldn't dance that way
and to come back in his dance clothes.
The formal dance world of tites and ballet shoes
was about to get real.
The training began modern ballet, ethnic dance.
One of the teachers he remembered most was David Wood,
who showed him how movement could carry a story
(06:18):
that dance could speak.
But the one who changed everything was Helen Tamiris.
He called meeting her the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.
She taught him that performing was more than fooling around.
It was a culture, a serious craft.
With her guidance, he shed the jitter bug look
and began working toward the body and presence of a trained dancer,
(06:40):
a concert dancer, a classical dancer.
On one of the walls of the school hung a photograph of Arthur Mitchell,
the African-American star of New York City Ballet,
frozen in mid-air in a soaring, balletic leap
for an African-American boy.
Just finding his way, that picture was a revelation,
proof that he belonged in this world, too.
(07:04):
At the same time, outside of school,
he was also a member of the Bernice Johnson dancers
in Jamaica, Queens.
Bernice was one of his heroes.
A woman, he said, gave me a chance to perform.
Under her wing, he studied with Lester Wilson,
a dancer whose elegance and power set the standard
(07:24):
and who later became a force on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Beside him in class were future dance stars,
Michael Peters and Lorraine Fields.
The Bernice Johnson school was demanding, professional,
and it gave him both a stage and a community of dancers
as ambitious as he was.
By his senior year at the high school of performing arts,
(07:46):
he had worked himself into form and was honored
with the school's Helen Tamiris Award
for excellence in modern dance.
A year after graduating, he got his first professional break
in the prodigal son, Langston Hughes' musical
retelling of the Biblical story,
staged at the Greenwich Muse Theatre.
Downstairs in the basement, Hughes wasn't just a writer,
(08:10):
he was a central voice of the Harlem Renaissance
and for a young Brooklyn dancer to be chosen by him
felt like a turning point.
Hughes brought him into his circle,
even taking him up to Harlem and introducing him
to the world of black artists and thinkers.
For the first time, he felt part of something bigger than himself.
(08:31):
And then, just as suddenly, it was over.
The production closed quickly and with it came doubt.
At 19, he walked away from show business altogether
and rolling in Manhattan's Pentecostal Theological Seminary.
For six months, he tried to imagine a different life,
one devoted to the church.
But the pull of the stage was too strong.
(08:53):
He soon realized he wasn't meant to be a minister.
He would have to find his way back.
One day, with nothing in his pockets,
he jumped a subway turnstile and rode into Manhattan.
Just trying to figure out his next step.
Almost instinctively, he walked past the high school of performing arts,
standing there on the sidewalk,
(09:14):
staring up at the building.
He thought about what it had once given him,
the promise of a life in the arts, the sense of possibility.
Now, he was on the outside again,
wondering if it had all been a mistake.
Something pulled him toward the corner new stand.
He picked up backstage the weekly trade paper
for performers and flipped it open.
(09:37):
And there it was, an audition, sweet charity,
headed for Las Vegas, starring Juliette Prous.
The audition was now that very day.
On impulse, he decided to go.
The palace theater was packed.
Inside, it was a true cattle call.
The first heat ever faced.
(09:59):
The palace stage was crowded with rows of men
stretching marking steps waiting to be seen.
Then, he noticed a figure moving cruelly down the aisle,
a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
It was Bob Fossy, though he barely knew
who that was.
Fossy got up, gave a quick demonstration of the choreography,
(10:19):
and then began slicing through the crowd
with a glance and quick cuts.
One by one, dancers were cut.
By the end of the day, the impossible had happened.
He was still standing and booked the job.
What he remembers most isn't the steps he danced,
but Fossy's cigarette,
(10:40):
and the fact that the ashes never once dropped.
In the desert, the neon lights looked like the size of tenements to him.
He had never even seen a Broadway show before,
and now he was in one.
For the first time in his life, he was earning a steady paycheck,
250 a week, performing the role of brother Ben
(11:01):
nightly beside Juliet Prous.
Under Fossy's eye, the raw energy he'd carried from the streets
and the church began to refine into something sharper.
Fossy pushed him toward precision,
toward presence, teaching him how to command a stage.
It was here in the casinos of Las Vegas
(11:22):
that he first began to feel what it meant to be a professional.
The tour carried him beyond Las Vegas,
this time with Chita Rivera at the helm,
and now his role was bigger.
Daddy Rubik, complete with his own solo number.
Night after night, he wasn't just dancing.
He was commanding the stage, belting, holding his own
(11:45):
alongside seasoned Broadway veterans.
For someone who had graduated high school barely two years earlier,
it felt like the world was moving fast.
Then, while on tour in Canada, everything seemed to shift again.
A telegram arrived.
He'd been cast in the film version of Sweet Charity.
(12:05):
What a shock, what an honor.
Now, he assumed he'd be playing Daddy Rubik,
the very role he was bringing to life each night.
But when he arrived in Hollywood, he learned his part
belonged to Sammy Davis Jr.
Still, the film gave him plenty.
As part of the ensemble, his face is everywhere
(12:27):
in the film's iconic dance numbers.
In the rich man's fruit, he's framed center in major sequences
and singled out for solo moments.
His presence is assured and smooth,
truly embodying Fossi's choreography.
His natural groove is impossible to miss.
He also supports Sammy Davis Jr.
(12:48):
in the rhythm of life, perfectly combining the essence of cool,
hippie and psychedelic.
To be featured like this, my Fossi himself was the highest of honors.
It was his first real taste of Hollywood,
and proof that he could hold the screen as easily as a stage.
But the sting of losing the role he assumed was his, had lingered.
(13:11):
And Sammy Davis Jr. noticed, he watched him work.
The talent was undeniable, but he could sense his disappointment on set.
So he extended an invitation, dinner.
To this young dancer, it was beyond surreal.
Sammy had been his idol since Boyhood, the ultimate song and danceman,
(13:32):
the performer he measured himself against.
His greatest inspiration.
And now they were at dinner together and not just dinner.
Sammy gave him an offer, a spot in Golden Boy,
the smash Broadway musical headed to Chicago and London.
More than that, he would serve as Sammy's own understudy.
(13:54):
He joined the Golden Boy Company where he was also the understudy
for Billy Daniels in the role of Eddie Satan.
He spent night after night in the wings studying every move,
and then came the call.
He had to go on for Daniels.
Sammy sat watching from the side.
When the performance was over, he turned to him,
(14:15):
and with pride simply said, "I knew it before walking away.
There was no higher proof that he belonged."
When Golden Boy closed in London, he was left wondering
how to make ends meet.
Then a fellow actor mentioned a new show holding auditions
in Los Angeles, hair.
The counter-cultural hit already shaking Broadway.
(14:39):
With almost nothing to spare, he scraped together
enough money for plane tickets and took the gamble.
In LA, at the Aquarius Theater, he was cast as HUD,
one of the show's most commanding roles.
Its radical energy and politics were a shock to the system
after the drilled precision of Fossy.
(15:00):
But his journey with hair did not stop there.
Soon, Broadway called.
He joined the New York Company as a replacement.
His official Broadway debut, stepping in as HUD
and even covering Clawed.
From there, he toured West again with the company
to San Francisco's Orphium Theater.
(15:20):
In while in California, he took on Charles Gordones
no place to be somebody.
A searing, Pulitzer Prize-winning play that pushed him into heavier,
more dramatic territory.
And then director Tom O'Horgin called.
He had first worked with him on hair.
And by 1971, O'Horgin was conceiving and directing
(15:41):
a new Broadway rock opera.
Jesus Christ superstar.
That summer, Tom had an invitation.
Would he take on Judas?
The role was raw, conflicted, demanding.
But everything in his training and his spirit made it clear.
This Judas was his.
On October 21, 1971, he stepped into the original Broadway company
(16:05):
of Jesus Christ superstar.
As Judas scared it, the show was controversial,
but his performance was undeniable.
Critics raved, singling him out as the best in the cast.
The one you couldn't take your eyes off of.
By spring, he had won the Theater World Award
and earned his first Tony nomination.
(16:26):
With superstar, he had arrived.
No longer a replacement or an understudy,
but a bonafide Broadway star.
Fresh off the fire of superstar, another call came.
From Bob Fossy, the man who had given him his first break in the business.
He wanted to cast him as the leading player in his new musical, Pippin.
(16:47):
On paper, the role was a little more than a narrator, a guide through the story.
But once rehearsals began, Fossy saw what he had in front of him in this performer.
Raw electricity, charisma that couldn't be contained.
So he kept shaping, adding, pushing.
The part swelled into something central,
(17:08):
a ringmaster, a seducer, the pulse of the entire show.
An opening night in 1972, the gamble paid off.
His charisma was molten.
His authority, absolute critics, raved audiences returned again and again.
By spring, the honors poured in.
The drama desk award.
(17:29):
And then the Tony for best actor in a musical.
Pippin made him into something more.
A force the entire industry had to reckon with.
In 1975, Hollywood came calling.
While still starring in Pippin, he took a 10 week leave from Broadway to film,
Funny Lady.
With Barbara Streisand, cast as Bert Robbins, a character modeled on Vodville legend,
(17:55):
Bert Williams, he lit up the screen in "Clapp Hands" here comes Charlie.
The number was chopped down in the final cut, critics and fans still complain about the edits.
But what remains is explosive.
Fossy style hip-roles, high fan kicks, tap dance breaks, even leaps onto a piano.
It was a kaleidoscope of everything he had trained for, compressed into a few minutes of film.
(18:21):
That same year, he broke further into the mainstream with "Camanatcha",
an NBC summer variety series that showed off his song, dance and even magic tricks.
And it was a ratings success.
The American Guild of Variety artists named him "Entertainer of the Year",
making him the only performer ever to sweep the guild's rising star, song and dance star,
(18:46):
and entertainer of the year honors.
By the mid-70s, he was a full-fledged star across stage, screen and television.
Then came the television event that changed everything, routes.
At first, he struggled to even get in the room.
His agent dismissed him as a song and dance man, and they would need real actors.
(19:07):
But eventually, he was cast as "Chicken George".
On screen, he gave the character both charisma and gravity,
a mix of vitality and resilience that audiences could not forget.
The performance earned him an Emmy nomination,
the television critics' Circle Award, and a new kind of fame.
Overnight, he was no longer a Broadway name or a variety star,
(19:30):
he was a national figure.
Then, in 1979, guess who called him again?
Bob Fossi, casting him as the showman who closes all that jazz, opposite Roy Scheider.
The finale, "By-by-Life", was a dazzling, unsettling spectacle,
a duet between Scheider and this performer,
(19:52):
where his magnetism sharpened the edge of Fossi's vision.
More than just another role, it was the continuation of a bond stretching back
to sweet charity and pippin.
And with it, he showed that the archetype of the song and dance man,
once tied to vaudeville stages and Broadway reviews,
could burn just as brightly on the movie screen as a modern force in cinema.
(20:16):
In 1992, his life nearly ended.
First, struck by a car outside his home,
and then hours later hit by another vehicle on the Pacific Coast Highway.
The injuries were nearly catastrophic,
head trauma, internal bleeding.
Doctors warned he might never walk again.
Later that year, still in recovery,
(20:37):
friends took him to see "Jelly's Last Jam" on Broadway.
Gregory Hines was celebrating his 100th performance when,
at the curtain call, he stopped the applause
and pointed into the audience.
He noticed him and let the crowd know.
The ovation was thunderous.
He was so overcome with emotion he could hardly breathe.
(20:59):
And then, in front of the crowd,
the producers called out that one of their actors was leaving the show.
And if he could pull himself back together,
the role would be his.
It was all the motivation he needed.
He couldn't yet run, jump, or even kneel,
but he showed up every day, relentless.
And on April 8, 1993, just 10 months after doctors had nearly given up,
(21:24):
he walked down the ramp and back onto a Broadway stage.
He wasn't finished.
By the end of the decade, he returned in Fossy,
the Tony-winning review that celebrated Bob Fossy's legacy,
performing Mr. Bo Jangles, he carried the weight of his own journey,
survival, artistry, and a lifetime shaped by dance.
(21:46):
And as one of Fossy's actual muses,
he added a depth no tribute alone could capture.
It was lived experience breathing inside the choreography.
And he kept going. In 2002, he joined the Broadway revival of "I'm Not Rappaport"
and soon after stepped into wicked,
bringing his singular presence to yet another generation of theater goers.
(22:10):
Honors followed.
Induction into the American theater hall of fame
tributes across stage and screen,
but his legacy was something larger.
He became the modern embodiment of the song and dance man,
not just steps, not just notes, but the full fusion of story,
movement, and soul.
(22:31):
Fossy trusted him again and again.
Audiences adored him and younger performers look to him as proof
that versatility itself could be an art form.
Even after the accident that nearly ended his life,
he said it slowed his body but never his spirit.
Through it all, he carried that spirit.
(22:52):
Electric generous, unshakable as both his gift and his legacy,
his name Ben Verine.
And now you know the rest of the story.
[MUSIC]
(23:15):
(gentle music)
(light music)
[Music]
(00:02):
He was a dancer who refused to be contained, reshaping what it meant to be a song and danceman in modern times.
Hey there! Welcome to the rest of the story, my weekly series on dance legends on my podcast, Hey Dancer.
I'm your host, Miller Daurey, and if you're loving this ongoing exploration of dancers who changed the game,
(00:25):
make sure you are subscribed or following along wherever you're watching or listening and do all the engagement stuff.
Like, comment, share because it lets the platform know I'm doing something right.
And that means a lot to me to help get these inspiring stories in front of more people.
Now as I often say, this is a dance centered podcast.
(00:47):
So yeah, while our subject today has an exceedingly versatile career, we're focused mostly on the dance.
Okay, 5, 6, 7, 8, let's begin.
He was born on October 10th, 1946 in Dade County, Florida.
At the time, his parents were barely getting by on low-paying jobs,
(01:07):
but within months, they joined the Great Migration, the wave of black families leaving the south in search of better opportunities.
They landed in Bedford, Stivocent, an integrated neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
His father, James, found steady work at the gypsy paint factory.
His mother, Pauline, became a wardrobe attendant in a local theater,
(01:29):
did made work and to further make ends meet, she also took in foster children.
For this boy, that meant a home that was always full of new faces.
He sometimes felt confused by the comings and goings, but as an only child, he also enjoyed the companionship.
And through it all, his mother made it clear that her bunny, as she called him, was special.
(01:52):
His godmother, Mary Eddie, taught him to sing.
She wasn't just family, she was the one who gave him his first real training,
leading him into her group, the Mary Eddie Vagabond Missionaries of Fulton and Herkamer Streets.
By 7, a family friend had taken him to a Pentecostal church,
where the worship wasn't polite or restrained.
(02:14):
It was clapping, stomping, voices lifted until the room shook.
He soaked it in, that sense of release of testifying through sound and movement.
And he wasn't just listening, he was already singing.
In Brooklyn, he joined a gospel quartet with the unforgettable name,
the sensational twilight of Brooklyn.
(02:34):
They sang in churches around the neighborhood, moving congregations to tears,
women literally crying in the pews when his young voice soared.
But music wasn't his only fascination.
Across the street from his home sat a shoe shine parlor called tip tap and toe.
The men who ran it had once been Vodville performers.
(02:57):
On Sundays, they would shine shoes, play jazz and break into tap.
He called it his very first introduction to dance,
standing there on the sidewalk, taking it all in.
Then when he was about eight, a salesman knocked at the family's door.
He was promoting the star-time dance studio.
(03:17):
To test the boy, he bent his leg back toward his head,
stretched him this way and that way, he remembers wanting to smack the man.
But the salesman turned to his mother and said,
"The boy is a born dancer."
His mother didn't hesitate.
She enrolled him at star-time.
He remembers the teacher reading steps from a Fred Astaire dance studio book.
(03:42):
By the time he was 10, he was already on neighborhood stages.
Variety shows in Brooklyn, touring hospitals to entertain patients.
His first pay job came at the Ebenezer Baptist Church,
dancing for the Lady's auxiliary fashion show for five dollars.
His mother kept pushing.
Finally, she placed him at the Green Dance Studio in Brooklyn under Dale Green,
(04:06):
a teacher who demanded more than steps.
The boy was taught culture and etiquette too.
By the time he reached Junior High at PS178 in Brooklyn,
he was ready for something bigger.
Dr. Hill, one of his teachers, cast him in an all-African-American production
of The King and I at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
(04:27):
This wasn't a church basement or a neighborhood stage.
It was costumes, lights, and a real paying audience.
His principal, Benjamin Raskin, saw the spark and told him
to audition for the high school of performing arts.
So he listened and showed up for the audition in Bermuda Shorts,
(04:48):
a t-shirt, a pair of Keds, and his father's skinny brim hat.
Other kids were polished, already trained,
moving to Chopin, dancing Balanchine combinations,
but he dropped the needle on a Quincy Jones record.
Killer Joe and did what he knew.
Afterward, he learned who had been on the judging panel.
(05:10):
He danced for Martha Graham, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine.
But he wasn't intimidated.
In his own words, I had no idea of these people
who had carved the world of dance into our culture.
And they clearly saw his potential.
He got in.
On the first day of school, they had everyone line up
(05:32):
and then changed into their dance clothes, which he did.
But then he also put on his suit back over his dance clothes,
because that's how he was raised.
You don't walk around in what feels like your underwear.
So when he arrived to class, the teacher asked
if he was taking class in his suit, he said,
"Yes, she asked, but where's your dance clothes?"
(05:54):
And he whispered, "Under my suit."
She told him that he couldn't dance that way
and to come back in his dance clothes.
The formal dance world of tites and ballet shoes
was about to get real.
The training began modern ballet, ethnic dance.
One of the teachers he remembered most was David Wood,
who showed him how movement could carry a story
(06:18):
that dance could speak.
But the one who changed everything was Helen Tamiris.
He called meeting her the luckiest thing that ever happened to him.
She taught him that performing was more than fooling around.
It was a culture, a serious craft.
With her guidance, he shed the jitter bug look
and began working toward the body and presence of a trained dancer,
(06:40):
a concert dancer, a classical dancer.
On one of the walls of the school hung a photograph of Arthur Mitchell,
the African-American star of New York City Ballet,
frozen in mid-air in a soaring, balletic leap
for an African-American boy.
Just finding his way, that picture was a revelation,
proof that he belonged in this world, too.
(07:04):
At the same time, outside of school,
he was also a member of the Bernice Johnson dancers
in Jamaica, Queens.
Bernice was one of his heroes.
A woman, he said, gave me a chance to perform.
Under her wing, he studied with Lester Wilson,
a dancer whose elegance and power set the standard
(07:24):
and who later became a force on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Beside him in class were future dance stars,
Michael Peters and Lorraine Fields.
The Bernice Johnson school was demanding, professional,
and it gave him both a stage and a community of dancers
as ambitious as he was.
By his senior year at the high school of performing arts,
(07:46):
he had worked himself into form and was honored
with the school's Helen Tamiris Award
for excellence in modern dance.
A year after graduating, he got his first professional break
in the prodigal son, Langston Hughes' musical
retelling of the Biblical story,
staged at the Greenwich Muse Theatre.
Downstairs in the basement, Hughes wasn't just a writer,
(08:10):
he was a central voice of the Harlem Renaissance
and for a young Brooklyn dancer to be chosen by him
felt like a turning point.
Hughes brought him into his circle,
even taking him up to Harlem and introducing him
to the world of black artists and thinkers.
For the first time, he felt part of something bigger than himself.
(08:31):
And then, just as suddenly, it was over.
The production closed quickly and with it came doubt.
At 19, he walked away from show business altogether
and rolling in Manhattan's Pentecostal Theological Seminary.
For six months, he tried to imagine a different life,
one devoted to the church.
But the pull of the stage was too strong.
(08:53):
He soon realized he wasn't meant to be a minister.
He would have to find his way back.
One day, with nothing in his pockets,
he jumped a subway turnstile and rode into Manhattan.
Just trying to figure out his next step.
Almost instinctively, he walked past the high school of performing arts,
standing there on the sidewalk,
(09:14):
staring up at the building.
He thought about what it had once given him,
the promise of a life in the arts, the sense of possibility.
Now, he was on the outside again,
wondering if it had all been a mistake.
Something pulled him toward the corner new stand.
He picked up backstage the weekly trade paper
for performers and flipped it open.
(09:37):
And there it was, an audition, sweet charity,
headed for Las Vegas, starring Juliette Prous.
The audition was now that very day.
On impulse, he decided to go.
The palace theater was packed.
Inside, it was a true cattle call.
The first heat ever faced.
(09:59):
The palace stage was crowded with rows of men
stretching marking steps waiting to be seen.
Then, he noticed a figure moving cruelly down the aisle,
a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
It was Bob Fossy, though he barely knew
who that was.
Fossy got up, gave a quick demonstration of the choreography,
(10:19):
and then began slicing through the crowd
with a glance and quick cuts.
One by one, dancers were cut.
By the end of the day, the impossible had happened.
He was still standing and booked the job.
What he remembers most isn't the steps he danced,
but Fossy's cigarette,
(10:40):
and the fact that the ashes never once dropped.
In the desert, the neon lights looked like the size of tenements to him.
He had never even seen a Broadway show before,
and now he was in one.
For the first time in his life, he was earning a steady paycheck,
250 a week, performing the role of brother Ben
(11:01):
nightly beside Juliet Prous.
Under Fossy's eye, the raw energy he'd carried from the streets
and the church began to refine into something sharper.
Fossy pushed him toward precision,
toward presence, teaching him how to command a stage.
It was here in the casinos of Las Vegas
(11:22):
that he first began to feel what it meant to be a professional.
The tour carried him beyond Las Vegas,
this time with Chita Rivera at the helm,
and now his role was bigger.
Daddy Rubik, complete with his own solo number.
Night after night, he wasn't just dancing.
He was commanding the stage, belting, holding his own
(11:45):
alongside seasoned Broadway veterans.
For someone who had graduated high school barely two years earlier,
it felt like the world was moving fast.
Then, while on tour in Canada, everything seemed to shift again.
A telegram arrived.
He'd been cast in the film version of Sweet Charity.
(12:05):
What a shock, what an honor.
Now, he assumed he'd be playing Daddy Rubik,
the very role he was bringing to life each night.
But when he arrived in Hollywood, he learned his part
belonged to Sammy Davis Jr.
Still, the film gave him plenty.
As part of the ensemble, his face is everywhere
(12:27):
in the film's iconic dance numbers.
In the rich man's fruit, he's framed center in major sequences
and singled out for solo moments.
His presence is assured and smooth,
truly embodying Fossi's choreography.
His natural groove is impossible to miss.
He also supports Sammy Davis Jr.
(12:48):
in the rhythm of life, perfectly combining the essence of cool,
hippie and psychedelic.
To be featured like this, my Fossi himself was the highest of honors.
It was his first real taste of Hollywood,
and proof that he could hold the screen as easily as a stage.
But the sting of losing the role he assumed was his, had lingered.
(13:11):
And Sammy Davis Jr. noticed, he watched him work.
The talent was undeniable, but he could sense his disappointment on set.
So he extended an invitation, dinner.
To this young dancer, it was beyond surreal.
Sammy had been his idol since Boyhood, the ultimate song and danceman,
(13:32):
the performer he measured himself against.
His greatest inspiration.
And now they were at dinner together and not just dinner.
Sammy gave him an offer, a spot in Golden Boy,
the smash Broadway musical headed to Chicago and London.
More than that, he would serve as Sammy's own understudy.
(13:54):
He joined the Golden Boy Company where he was also the understudy
for Billy Daniels in the role of Eddie Satan.
He spent night after night in the wings studying every move,
and then came the call.
He had to go on for Daniels.
Sammy sat watching from the side.
When the performance was over, he turned to him,
(14:15):
and with pride simply said, "I knew it before walking away.
There was no higher proof that he belonged."
When Golden Boy closed in London, he was left wondering
how to make ends meet.
Then a fellow actor mentioned a new show holding auditions
in Los Angeles, hair.
The counter-cultural hit already shaking Broadway.
(14:39):
With almost nothing to spare, he scraped together
enough money for plane tickets and took the gamble.
In LA, at the Aquarius Theater, he was cast as HUD,
one of the show's most commanding roles.
Its radical energy and politics were a shock to the system
after the drilled precision of Fossy.
(15:00):
But his journey with hair did not stop there.
Soon, Broadway called.
He joined the New York Company as a replacement.
His official Broadway debut, stepping in as HUD
and even covering Clawed.
From there, he toured West again with the company
to San Francisco's Orphium Theater.
(15:20):
In while in California, he took on Charles Gordones
no place to be somebody.
A searing, Pulitzer Prize-winning play that pushed him into heavier,
more dramatic territory.
And then director Tom O'Horgin called.
He had first worked with him on hair.
And by 1971, O'Horgin was conceiving and directing
(15:41):
a new Broadway rock opera.
Jesus Christ superstar.
That summer, Tom had an invitation.
Would he take on Judas?
The role was raw, conflicted, demanding.
But everything in his training and his spirit made it clear.
This Judas was his.
On October 21, 1971, he stepped into the original Broadway company
(16:05):
of Jesus Christ superstar.
As Judas scared it, the show was controversial,
but his performance was undeniable.
Critics raved, singling him out as the best in the cast.
The one you couldn't take your eyes off of.
By spring, he had won the Theater World Award
and earned his first Tony nomination.
(16:26):
With superstar, he had arrived.
No longer a replacement or an understudy,
but a bonafide Broadway star.
Fresh off the fire of superstar, another call came.
From Bob Fossy, the man who had given him his first break in the business.
He wanted to cast him as the leading player in his new musical, Pippin.
(16:47):
On paper, the role was a little more than a narrator, a guide through the story.
But once rehearsals began, Fossy saw what he had in front of him in this performer.
Raw electricity, charisma that couldn't be contained.
So he kept shaping, adding, pushing.
The part swelled into something central,
(17:08):
a ringmaster, a seducer, the pulse of the entire show.
An opening night in 1972, the gamble paid off.
His charisma was molten.
His authority, absolute critics, raved audiences returned again and again.
By spring, the honors poured in.
The drama desk award.
(17:29):
And then the Tony for best actor in a musical.
Pippin made him into something more.
A force the entire industry had to reckon with.
In 1975, Hollywood came calling.
While still starring in Pippin, he took a 10 week leave from Broadway to film,
Funny Lady.
With Barbara Streisand, cast as Bert Robbins, a character modeled on Vodville legend,
(17:55):
Bert Williams, he lit up the screen in "Clapp Hands" here comes Charlie.
The number was chopped down in the final cut, critics and fans still complain about the edits.
But what remains is explosive.
Fossy style hip-roles, high fan kicks, tap dance breaks, even leaps onto a piano.
It was a kaleidoscope of everything he had trained for, compressed into a few minutes of film.
(18:21):
That same year, he broke further into the mainstream with "Camanatcha",
an NBC summer variety series that showed off his song, dance and even magic tricks.
And it was a ratings success.
The American Guild of Variety artists named him "Entertainer of the Year",
making him the only performer ever to sweep the guild's rising star, song and dance star,
(18:46):
and entertainer of the year honors.
By the mid-70s, he was a full-fledged star across stage, screen and television.
Then came the television event that changed everything, routes.
At first, he struggled to even get in the room.
His agent dismissed him as a song and dance man, and they would need real actors.
(19:07):
But eventually, he was cast as "Chicken George".
On screen, he gave the character both charisma and gravity,
a mix of vitality and resilience that audiences could not forget.
The performance earned him an Emmy nomination,
the television critics' Circle Award, and a new kind of fame.
Overnight, he was no longer a Broadway name or a variety star,
(19:30):
he was a national figure.
Then, in 1979, guess who called him again?
Bob Fossi, casting him as the showman who closes all that jazz, opposite Roy Scheider.
The finale, "By-by-Life", was a dazzling, unsettling spectacle,
a duet between Scheider and this performer,
(19:52):
where his magnetism sharpened the edge of Fossi's vision.
More than just another role, it was the continuation of a bond stretching back
to sweet charity and pippin.
And with it, he showed that the archetype of the song and dance man,
once tied to vaudeville stages and Broadway reviews,
could burn just as brightly on the movie screen as a modern force in cinema.
(20:16):
In 1992, his life nearly ended.
First, struck by a car outside his home,
and then hours later hit by another vehicle on the Pacific Coast Highway.
The injuries were nearly catastrophic,
head trauma, internal bleeding.
Doctors warned he might never walk again.
Later that year, still in recovery,
(20:37):
friends took him to see "Jelly's Last Jam" on Broadway.
Gregory Hines was celebrating his 100th performance when,
at the curtain call, he stopped the applause
and pointed into the audience.
He noticed him and let the crowd know.
The ovation was thunderous.
He was so overcome with emotion he could hardly breathe.
(20:59):
And then, in front of the crowd,
the producers called out that one of their actors was leaving the show.
And if he could pull himself back together,
the role would be his.
It was all the motivation he needed.
He couldn't yet run, jump, or even kneel,
but he showed up every day, relentless.
And on April 8, 1993, just 10 months after doctors had nearly given up,
(21:24):
he walked down the ramp and back onto a Broadway stage.
He wasn't finished.
By the end of the decade, he returned in Fossy,
the Tony-winning review that celebrated Bob Fossy's legacy,
performing Mr. Bo Jangles, he carried the weight of his own journey,
survival, artistry, and a lifetime shaped by dance.
(21:46):
And as one of Fossy's actual muses,
he added a depth no tribute alone could capture.
It was lived experience breathing inside the choreography.
And he kept going. In 2002, he joined the Broadway revival of "I'm Not Rappaport"
and soon after stepped into wicked,
bringing his singular presence to yet another generation of theater goers.
(22:10):
Honors followed.
Induction into the American theater hall of fame
tributes across stage and screen,
but his legacy was something larger.
He became the modern embodiment of the song and dance man,
not just steps, not just notes, but the full fusion of story,
movement, and soul.
(22:31):
Fossy trusted him again and again.
Audiences adored him and younger performers look to him as proof
that versatility itself could be an art form.
Even after the accident that nearly ended his life,
he said it slowed his body but never his spirit.
Through it all, he carried that spirit.
(22:52):
Electric generous, unshakable as both his gift and his legacy,
his name Ben Verine.
And now you know the rest of the story.
[MUSIC]
(23:15):
(gentle music)
(light music)
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