Ray Workman: A Fan's Memories of Hello, Dolly!

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In the large scheme of things, you probably have never heardof Ray Workman. He’s not “in the business” and he has no other relationshipwith Dolly beyond being a huge fan. When you hear his story, I think you willunderstand why I chose to include him as part of this project.
Dolly is a busy-body matchmaker type, who likes being in oneverything and knowing everything there is to know about everyone she meets. Can't dance? She'll teach you. Ray feels the same aboutDolly Levi.He probably holds the undocumented record of seeing Hello, Dolly, probably nine hundredperformances! He has seen up to twelve or thirteen different Dollys. Obviously,it is Ray’s favorite show. He feels that nothing has ever topped it. He doesn’tthink anything ever will. He has seen Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, MarthaRaye, Phyllis Diller, Pearl Bailey, Dorothy Lamour, Sheila MacRae, Jo AnneWorley,  Eve Arden,  Yvonne De Carlo, Carol Swarbrick, and thensome women that are not as well known as the ones cited here. He also saw Nell Carter in DOLLY with Nipsy Russell in Long Beach in the early 90's, just before the Long Beach CLO went under.  They booked that show as the First International Cast, as it was a totally mixed ethnic cast.  She was fine as Dolly, and Nipsey was very funny.  Ray remembers she cried during her closing night speech, saying it was one of the best companies she had ever worked with.It all began when Ray had just graduated high school in 1965.Actually, this story begins in August. His grandmother came to him, tellingthat the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the LA Music Center was opening in LosAngeles. She wanted to get season tickets. She was an avid theater goer.  Ray had never been to the theater. Hisgrandmother talked him into going. That season included Carol Channing inHello, Dolly and Florence Henderson and Ricardo Montalban. Ray was familiarwith Channing because of a television special she did. He was enthralled withher.  She blew him out of his chair. He couldn’t wait to see her in Dolly. Shehad also done a number, at that point, on the Ed Sullivan Show. He’s thinkingit was Before the Parade Passes By.Of course, EVERYBODY was singing the title tube.Ray’s parents knew that he and his grandmother were going, so they asked if hecould get tickets for Dolly for them as well. Ray took his younger brother whowas about ten years old at the time. Because of huge demand, they opened theticket sales window on a Sunday. That had never been done before. The phoneswere ringing off the hook.  Dolly wasonly going to play LA for seven weeks. They wanted to sell all the tickets onthe same day and give everybody the same chance.  Ray and his brother took the bus about half anhour from where they lived. They lived in Compton, California which is abouttwelve mile south of LA. They got up around five thirty in the morning and theygot to downtown LA around six fifteen AM. The box office wasn’t open andalready the crowd was enormous! This was documented in The LA Times.  The lines to buy tickets were so intense and theyopened the box office at ten AM.  The box office stayed open until every seatwas sold. That was about four thirty that same afternoon. Ray and his brotherstood in line from seven AM until four PM. An announcement was made about halfan hour before they got to the box office window. “May we have your attention,please? There are no more Saturday night tickets left.” They did that as eachday sold out. Ray’s parents could only go on a Monday night. Ray’s father wasoff only one day a week at that time. As they stood in line and kept hearingall of the days dropping off like flies, there were some nights AND matineesdisappearing, narrowing their options. By the time they got to the box officewindow, they were able to get the last two tickets on a particular Mondaynight! There were still people behind them. God only knows what their fate was.In the next day’s LA TIMES, it wasstated that all fifty six performances for its entire seven week run was soldout! This was before TKTS and Telecharge or TicketMaster! They weren’t eventaking telephone orders. You HAD to go to the box office! People didn’t havethe credit cards that are now the norm.  Ofcourse, there were no ATMs at that time. People were there with full cashbuying what they could. One thing, also, that is noteworthy. There were two foodtrucks who got word about this huge lines of people standing in the hotCalifornian August sun to buy tickets for Dolly. Those two food truckscompletely ran out of food. Ray and his grandmother ended up buying season tickets. Theywere in the third row of the third balcony. At that time, that was expenditure towatch their pennies to do. Remember, Ray was still in high school. He wasworking part time in a movie theater.

He was making a dollar thirty an hour.His grandmother was working for Western Auto.
Ray saw one of her pay stubsafter she passed away. This woman lived on ninety three dollars a week.  She thought when she got the tickets that shewould buy better tickets for Ray’s parents and then switch them. Needless tosay, they kept their tickets. Ray’s parents ended up in the last row of thethird balcony. Ray’s father always joked that there was only one person higherup than him and that was God. They were up where the follow spot was positionedto follow Channing. For those of you who have been to the Pavilion, you knowthat that is high up. There are 3197 seats at the DorothyChandler. Ray’s parents did not see it the same night that Ray and hisgrandmother did. Ray’s parents saw it the second week on a Monday night. 
 Rayand his grandmother saw it the following week on a Tuesday night. The nightthat Ray’s parents saw it, they got home that evening about eleven forty five PM.Ray’s mother was holding her beloved Dollyprogram that she had purchased. In those days, it was one dollar to purchase a souvenirprogram. In that cast, Horace McMann was Horace Vandergelder and Harvey Evanswas Barnaby Tucker. Ray remembers Horace was very good. Ray didn’t know toomuch about him prior. He was so enthralled with Carol that it was as if she wasthe only one on stage. 
 He does remember how wonderful Harvey was as Barnaby. Ashe recalls, there WAS a good chemistry between Channing and McMann. He doesn’t remembertoo much about McMann other than he looked the part. Even his picture in theprogram captured that. He reminded Ray of David Burns from pictures he hadseen. He didn’t travel long with her before being replaced by Max Showalter.McMann passed away in 1971. He was sixty five. The show opened at the DorothyChandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center, on Tuesday Evening,September 14, 1965 and closed on Saturday evening October 30, 1965.
Her standbywas Lisa Kirk. Evening Performances were Monday through Saturday Eves at eightthirty PM   Matinees, on Wednesday andSaturday at two thirty PM. Dark on Sundays.Harvey had the enthusiasm that Barnaby needs.He really nailed it for Ray, much more so than the actor playing CorneliusHackl. Harvey was the right age and build for it. Hid enthusiasm wasinfectious. Also, the cast was fresh; this was the beginning of the week andthey had not done a matinee that day.  The show opened late September 1965. Ray hadstarted college. 
He had the cast album and practically wore it out before heeven saw the show!The one thing that Ray remembers above allothers that night was Carol Channing’s smile. It showed up to the thirdbalcony. It also didn’t hurt that they had opera glasses. Carol took thatentire audience of 3200 people with standing room and had them in her hand andheld them there for two and a half hours. Everyone was absolutely enthralledwith her performance. He has never seen an audience get back to their seats afterintermission as this cast did. They loved Act One so much, they couldn’t waitfor Act Two.     Ray only saw Channing once during that run atthe Pavilion but he did see her in future productions over the years. Themoment the show was within reach, Ray got a group of tickets in hand. In 1977, she played the Pantages Theater inLA on Hollywood Boulevard. When he saw it at the Pantages, he had better seatsthan six years ago at the Dorothy Chandler. This time around, he had fourth rowaisle seats in the orchestra section. This time around, he caught everything,ALL of Channing’s nuances, all of her facial expressions, her eyes when shewould roll them at Vandergelder for one reason or another. 
It brought the housedown, those aspects that he missed from the first time. He ended up seeing thatproduction three or four times. Tour stops included the Los Angeles CountyMusic Center in 1982 and the Orange County Performing Arts Center and PasadenaCivic Auditorium in 1995. They staged the show in 1978 for the opening of LongBeach's Terrace Theatre. They were not able to open on their scheduled opening atThe Terrace Theater due to a sound issue in the theater. 
Carol would not allowthe show to open without the sound being perfect. They ended up opening on aWednesday night after that. In 1978, Ray was working at The Long Beach CivicLight Opera. He saw the Terrace Theater run also three or four times. He remembersthe last performance of that run took place on a Sunday, there was a matineeand an evening show and Ray saw both. Ray caught Carol’s last tour in 1994 inseveral places. He saw her at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. In 1995,Channing received the Lifetime achievement Tony Award. Harvey Sabinson, who wasthe press rep for Dolly also received a Lifetime Achievement Award that year. Carolhad previously won a Tony Award in 1964 and the New York Drama Critics Awardfor her role in Hello, Dolly! Ray saw both the opening and closingperformances at the Orpheum. She played the Sacramento Community Theater inSacramento. That was the last time he saw her do it in February of 1997. Thirtyyears later, under the guidance of Lee Roy Reams as director, she had a littlemore sexuality in her performance. Channing, now 76, seemed so comfortable inthe role you couldn’t picture seeing anyone else on stage doing it.   Theopening night crowd at the Community Center clearly loved her every minute shewas on stage. Carol had the audience won over the second she first appeared andcould do no wrong in the eyes of the crowd. During her Ephraim ‘Let me go”speech, she had tears in her eyes, something Ray had never noticed before. 
Again, this is due to Lee Roy’s influence. There was poignancy to rejoining thehuman race again. Perhaps it had something to do with his seat, but he neverrecalled seeing that before. Channing worked the role well.  Lee Roy Reams played Cornelius Hackl and ScottBridges appeared as Barnaby Tucker.In 1982, The Long Beach Civic Opera acquired therights to present Jo Anne Worley in Dolly. Tickets were printed up as well asadvertising and promotional materials including posters. It was announced aspart of that season. Channing was also touring with Dolly that year. Anengagement fell through with one of the stops of that tour.  In was decided that they would bring Channingback into LA in for two weeks to play the Dorothy Chandler. Meanwhile, this wasgoing to overlap with the Jo Anne Worley production at The Long Beach CivicOpera. The LA Times had fun with this calling it the dueling Dollys. At onepoint, Jo Anne was interviewed and talked about the fact that she had beenCarol’s standby in New York. Jo Anne said in the interview at that time thatalthough she did not see Carol that often, they were still friends. Jo Annealso said in that interview that the difference between a standby and anunderstudy was five hundred dollars. That was on Channel Five, on one of thelocal networks. 

Jo Ann Worley

So for a brief moment, you had these two Dollys in twoproductions about fourteen miles apart. His second favorite Dolly is Pearl Bailey. “Shenailed it.” She brought to Dolly something that Carol had not done. It was acompletely different show with Bailey. You couldn’t help but love it. Baileyreached out and grabbed the audience just as Carol did. You always felt thatCarol was part of the company. And, as with Carol, you were with her from themoment she put down that newspaper until her “third act”, which was almost aforty five minute stance after a full two and a half hour show, in which shewould do a club act while the company stood there! Ray saw it with both CabCallaway and Billy Daniels. Carol, for Ray, will always come in as Number Onebut Pearl will come in as Number Two. The one Dolly who was missed the mark, forRay, was Sheila MacRae. Jo Anne Worley was supposed to do Dolly in SanBernadino.  She was offered a tour of Pirates of Penzance. They brought inSheila MacRae at the last minute. He doesn’t know if it was lack of rehearsal,or what it was, Sheila just didn’t do the part justice. She came across like a “truckdriver in drag. She missed it completely.”  He felt like the “humorless” restaurant scenewould go on for the rest of his life. He thought they would never get to thepolka number. Martha Raye did it at the Long Beach CivicOpera. Dorothy Lamour played it with a bus and truck company several yearsprior to that. Even though Martha Raye did it on Broadway, she didn’t seem toknow her lines the night Ray saw it. She was paid ten thousand dollars toperform it for nine performances. That was three weeks in a row, Friday andSaturday nights, and Sunday matinees. She was going up all the time on herlines. 

Martha Raye Company

Ray saw several of those performances. A funny thing happened on herclosing night that brought the house down. In the Harmonia Gardens,Vandergelder stands up and tells Dolly he’s leaving. Martha says, “Wait aminute! The Polka contest is about to begin and I just remembered my lines!” Theaudience fell off their chairs laughing. She kept breaking that fourth wall allthe time. There was a gay bar in Laguna Beach called The Little Shrimp thatbusloads of guys would go to the shows from. She had a large contingencyattending her shows from there. She frequented it , even sitting at the pianobar singing. Also on closing night, as she is hugging the cash register, shesays, “When I think of the money and the jewels and brunch at the Little Shrimpin Laguna” as she looked up at the mezzanine. Ray thought to himself, at thetime, that if the creators were there, they wouldn’t like that, breaking thatfourth wall, although she got laughs. There is an unwritten law that you don’tgo off script for anything. Read what Will Mackenzie had to say about that whenhe went off script in Ginger Roger’s Dolly company. The last Dolly that Ray saw was CarolSwarbrick at the Sacramento Music Circus. Ray believes that something is lostwhen Dolly is performed in the round. He believes it needs a proscenium stage.When the runway and stairs are gone, you are missing two important elements ofhow this show was meant to be performed. Carol Swarbrick made her entrance intothe Harmonia Gardens as the cast sang Hello,Dolly to her. It didn’t have the same impact. Carol Swarbrick was fun and agood Dolly. It was not nearly as exciting as a proscenium stage production. Shewas funny, the restaurant scene, in particular. He doesn’t know what she waseating, but she did it with such relish, just as Channing did. 

Carol Swarbrick as Dolly

She just kept gobblingdown this food. The more she did so, the more the audience roared. 
Therestaurant scene was also out in the house, on a riser. She was that muchcloser to the people around her. There was no place for her to get rid ofanything that might not be tasty. 
Carol almost checked to death on stage withno where to go. Ray also had another layer to his Dollystory. He was friends with Danny Lockin who had played Barnaby Tucker inseveral productions of Dolly AND repeated the role in the film. Ray was takingTheater Arts in Cerritos College in Norwalk, California. He was also studyingjournalism. When Dolly came back in June of 1967, once again at the DorothyChandler, this time with Ginger Rogers and David Burns, Ray once again took hisgrandmother. They moved from third row in the third balcony to fourth rowcenter orchestra seats. This time, also, it was his treat. Now, he had moneycoming in; he was working in addition to going college. Danny Lockin blew Rayout of the water; he couldn’t believe how wonderful Danny was. He nailed thepart of Barnaby Tucker. Danny seemed to have even more enthusiasm than Harveydid, if that is at all possible. Ray sent Danny a note asking him if he couldinterview him for his college paper. He mailed it to him in care of thePavilion. A week later, Danny called Ray at home. He told Ray he would love tomeet with after the Saturday matinee. Ray ended up interviewing him backstagein his dressing room which he shared with Bill Mullikin, who was playing Cornelius.Ray wrote fast and furious since he didn’t have a tape recorder. After theinterview, he asked Ray if he would like a tour of the backstage area. It wasgetting close to six PM, and there was a lot of backstage activity for thatnight’s show. 

Michael Crawford and Danny Lockin from the film

Ray sent a copy of the interview before it was published.  Danny read it and approved it. They kept intouch with each other. Ray also saw the show a couple of times during that run. 
Ray saw it every week, sometimes three or four times just to see Danny do it,Ray thought he was so great. After seven weeks at the Pavilion, the show wasmoving to the Curran in San Francisco. Ray said that he was going to get thetickets and go up for their closing night. Danny wanted to treat Ray for thetickets, but Ray declined. 
Ray was invited back by Danny. Danny introducedGinger to Ray who remembered him from Los Angeles. She was very gracious. Afterseeing Ray a couple of times, she would greet him with, “You’re back again! Howdid we do this time?” Around that time, Danny told Ray that something wasbrewing that he could not talk about. It was the movie! He never said a wordabout it until after all contracts were signed. Ray loved him in the movie;thought he was wonderful. He was toned down for the movie. Gene Kelly toneddown the enthusiasm that Lucia unleashed on stage.

Danny Lockin

Unfortunately, Danny had a sad ending. Rayheard about it at work. This was August of 1977.Someone that Ray worked withcalled to tell him that Danny Lockin had been killed. It was in Variety. Rayran out and got the paper. It was a daily at that time. Variety wasn’t as clearas the LA Times as to what had happened. 
He was brutally stabbed over a hundredtimes. Apparently, he had met someone in a bar in Garden Grove. Ray, who isgay, did not know that Danny was. Danny was dating one of the girls in the showwhen Ray met him. They also got married and had a child. Ray and Danny had goneout for coffee and pie for a couple of times, never for cocktails. Ray was nota drinker. They never discussed sexuality. Ray’s attraction to Danny wasbecause he was a great man, nothing more. 
Ray had met Cathy Haas, who Dannymarried. Cathy had played the front end of a horse in a dance number when the Dolly! company played in  San Francisco.  In 1967, while working with Dorothy Lamour inLas Vegas, they got married and later lived in a tiny apartment in New YorkCity.  During the shooting of Hello Dolly, Cathy became pregnant, sothey moved back to LA., bought a house and in early 1969, their son JeremyDaniel was born. She was very standoffish and aloof towards Ray. Maybe it wasbecause Danny and Ray clicked as two friends. He doesn’t know.
The first time Ray saw Dolly, he was eighteenyears old. He is now sixty-five. The show epitomizes for Ray the message thatyou can start all over again with your life. It doesn’t end because someonepasses away. Dolly says it all in BeforeThe Parade Passes By. As Carol Channing says, that is the spine of theshow. Dolly fights on and succeeds. The show hit at the right time in ourcountry. Kennedy had been assassinated a mere few months before this showopened on Broadway. What this country needed was something light and airy andfun. That is why, there is a production of Dolly playing somewhere in the worldon any given night. We are overdue for revivals of both Dolly and Mame onBroadway! 

Thank you Ray Workman for the gifts you have given to the world and will continue to give!


With grateful XOXOXs ,


Check out my site celebrating my forthcoming book on Hello, Dolly!

I want this to be a definitive account of Hello, Dolly!  If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with you!

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If you have anything to add or share, please contact me at Richard@RichardSkipper.com.


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