Gerome Ragni (born Jerome Bernard Ragni; September 11, 1935 – July 10, 1991) was an American actor, singer, and
songwriter
A songwriter is a person who creates musical compositions or writes lyrics for songs, or both. The writer of the music for a song can be called a composer, although this term tends to be used mainly in the classical music genre and film scoring. ...
, best known as one of the stars and co-writers of the 1967
musical
Musical is the adjective of music.
Musical may also refer to:
* Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance
* Musical film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), charac ...
''
Hair
Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and ...
''.
On June 18, 2009, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Early life
Born Jerome Bernard Ragni in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
, he was one of ten
Italian-American
Italian Americans () are Americans who have full or partial Italians, Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeastern United States, Northeast and industrial Midwestern United States, Midwestern ...
siblings.
He attended suburban Scott Township High School, where he appeared in various school productions.
He attended
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...
and
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Catholic research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is one of two pontifical universities of the Catholic Church in the United States – the only one that is not primarily ...
. At Catholic University, he discovered an interest in theater, and began studying acting with Philip Burton. Ragni made his acting debut in
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
in 1954, playing Father Corr in ''
Shadow and Substance''. He continued to act whenever he could find work. In 1963, he appeared in the
New York production of ''War'' at the
Village South Theatre, for which he won the Barter Theatre Award for Outstanding Actor.
Career
In 1954, Ragni made his professional stage debut in a Washington D.C. production, ''
Shadow and Substance''.
In 1964, he was an understudy for the role of Horatio at the
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, originally the Globe Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 205 West 46th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Opened in 1910, the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was designed by C ...
in the
Broadway production of ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'', starring
Richard Burton
Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor.
Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s and gave a memor ...
.
He then appeared as the Messenger (uncredited) in ''
Richard Burton's Hamlet'', the film version of the production, released by
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...
in 1964.
That same year, Ragni made his first
Off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
appearance in New York City in the anti-
capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...
musical ''Hang Down Your Head and Die'' at the Mayfair Theatre on October 18 with
James Rado, a fellow actor and friend who was studying with
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg (born Israel Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American acting coach and actor. He co-founded, with theatre directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed ...
.
''Hang Down Your Head and Die'' was a success in London. It was first produced in the UK by the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club in 1964; two cast members and writers were students
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones a ...
and
Michael Palin
Sir Michael Edward Palin (; born 5 May 1943) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and television presenter. He was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. He received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, BAFTA Fellowship in 2013 and was knig ...
, who would later achieve fame as members of the
Monty Python
Monty Python, also known as the Pythons, were a British comedy troupe formed in 1969 consisting of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. The group came to prominence for the sketch comedy ser ...
comedy troupe. It then moved from Oxford to the Comedy Theatre in London's West End, was well-received and ran six weeks. But when it moved to New York the musical only had one performance, opening and closing on October 18, 1964. Theater critic Howard Taubman wrote in ''The New York Times'', "Death by hanging is swift, but ''Hang Down Your Head and Die'' makes a long evening of it... After a while, one feels as if one were being bludgeoned."
In 1965, Ragni performed in the role of Tom in ''
The Knack'', the play that opened at the
New Theatre, and later appeared in the touring company along with Rado. During the show's
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
run at the Harper Theater, Rado and Ragni tried to revive ''Hang Down Your Head and Die'' with what they could remember from the script. They also planned to introduce new material in collaboration with
Corky Siegel
Mark Paul "Corky" Siegel (born October 24, 1943) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and composer. He plays harmonica and piano. He plays and writes blues and blues-rock music, and has also worked extensively on combining blues and cla ...
and
Jim Schwall, of the
Siegel-Schwall Band, whom they met playing in a
beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the mid-20th century, who subscribed to an anti- materialistic lifestyle. They rejected the conformity and consumerism of mainstream American culture and expressed themselves through various forms ...
coffee house off the Harper Street strip. They spent time writing ideas for the production, which was to be performed by Rado, Ragni, Schwall, and Siegel in a house on the
South Side of Chicago and an apartment on
Stony Island Avenue
Stony Island Avenue is a major street on South Side of the city of Chicago, designated 1600 East in Chicago's street numbering system. It runs from 56th Street south to the Calumet River. Stony Island Avenue continues sporadically south of th ...
. Rado and Ragni rented the Harper Theatre to put on the production. After two weeks of working on the production, ''The Knack'' company went back to New York and Ragni and Rado had to abandon their plans to revive ''Hang Down Your Head and Die'' with Siegel and Schwall.
''Hair''
Ragni had been involved with
The Open Theater since it was begun as part of the
Living Theatre in 1962. In 1966, Open Theatre began rehearsals for the
Megan Terry
Marguerite Duffy (July 22, 1932 – April 12, 2023), known professionally as Megan Terry, was an American playwright, screenwriter, and theatre artist.
Terry produced over fifty works for theater, radio, and television, and is best known for her ...
play ''
Viet Rock
''Viet Rock'' is a rock musical by Megan Terry that served as inspiration to the musical ''Hair (musical), Hair''. A violent denunciation of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, the play was described by its author as a "folk war movie" co ...
''. Ragni took a leading role in the show, which opened at the Martinique Theatre in
New York and had a successful run.
''Viet Rock'' and experimental theatre inspired Ragni to work with Rado on a musical about
hippie culture. As research, they associated with a group of youths in the
East Village who were
dropping out and
dodging the draft. They talked to people in the streets and people they knew, and read articles about hippie culture and youths being kicked out of school for growing their hair long.
They wrote lyrics to thirteen songs ("Ain't Got No", "I Got Life", "Reading and Writing", "Don't Put It Down", "Sodomy", "Colored Spade", "Manchester, England", "Frank Mills", "We Look at One Another", "
Hair
Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and ...
", "
Aquarius", "
Easy to Be Hard", "
Good Morning Starshine" and "Where Do I Go?"), and completed the first version of their musical, called ''
Hair
Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals.
The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and ...
''. Two of the thirteen songs were removed, many songs were revised, titles were changed, and more songs were written as they continued to work on the show.
Once they agreed on a draft, Ragni and Rado brought the idea to
producer Nat Shapiro for consideration. He responded to the songs by asking, "Where's the music?" Shapiro introduced Ragni and Rado to composer
Galt MacDermot
Arthur Terence Galt MacDermot (December 18, 1928 – December 17, 2018) was a Canadian-American composer, pianist and writer of musical theater. He won a Grammy Award for the song "African Waltz" in 1960. His most successful musicals were ''Hair ...
, who took the script and returned three weeks later with music for the songs Ragni and Rado had written. Their agent, Janet Roberts, tried to sell the show to
Broadway producers, but it was rejected.
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky; June 22, 1921 – October 31, 1991) was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp is a pioneering figure in American theater, known for creating Shakespeare in the Park, which aimed to make classi ...
, of the
New York Shakespeare Festival, called to say he wanted to produce it at
his new theatre on Lafayette Street.
Gerald Freedman was artistic director for the theater and signed on to direct the first production of ''Hair''. On October 29, 1967, ''Hair'' opened at
The Public Theater
The Public Theater is an arts organization in New York City. Founded by Joseph Papp, The Public Theater was originally the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954; its mission was to support emerging playwrights and performers.Epstein, Helen. ''Joe Papp: ...
with Ragni as Berger, MacDermot as a cop who busts the show at the end of the first act, and Rado as Claude.
Michael Butler attended the opening night and subsequent performances, and was dissatisfied when Rado did not regularly play Claude, as he felt Rado had a natural affinity for the part.
Butler became interested in moving the show to Broadway. He bought the rights from Papp for $50,000 and began planning a grander production directed by
Tom O'Horgan, who Ragni knew from
off-Broadway
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer tha ...
. In the meantime, the show moved to a
nightclub
A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a Bar (establishment), bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighti ...
in
Midtown, called
Cheetah
The cheetah (''Acinonyx jubatus'') is a large Felidae, cat and the Fastest animals, fastest land animal. It has a tawny to creamy white or pale buff fur that is marked with evenly spaced, solid black spots. The head is small and rounded, wit ...
, where it had a month-long run. When O'Horgan signed on, the show hired choreographer Julie Arenal, assistant to
Anna Sokolow, who had choreographed the
Public Theater run.
On April 29, 1968, the show re-opened in its revised form at the
Biltmore Theatre on Broadway. Rado and Ragni reprised their roles from the off-Broadway production, and MacDermot was the musical director. The songs became hit singles for MacDermot,
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli ( ; born March 12, 1946) is an American actress, singer, and dancer. Known for her commanding stage presence and powerful alto singing voice, Minnelli has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, ...
,
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle Jr. (June 1, 1921 – October 6, 1985) was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. He worked with many vocalists at Capitol Records, including ...
,
The Staples Singers,
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. Over the course of his seven-decade career, he received List of awards and nominations re ...
,
Three Dog Night
Three Dog Night is an American rock band formed in 1967, founded by vocalists Chuck Negron, Cory Wells, and Danny Hutton. This lineup was soon augmented by Jimmy Greenspoon (keyboards), Joe Schermie (bass), Michael Allsup (guitar), and Floyd Sn ...
,
The Cowsills
The Cowsills are an American singing group from Newport, Rhode Island, six siblings noted for performing professionally and singing harmonies at an early age, later with their mother.
The band was formed in early 1965 by brothers Bill Cowsill, B ...
,
Madeline Bell,
Paul Jones,
Sonja Kristina,
The 5th Dimension
The 5th Dimension is an American vocal group. Their music encompasses sunshine pop, pop soul, and psychedelic soul. They were an important crossover music act of the 1960s and 1970s, although both praised and derided for their particular music ...
,
Oliver,
Caterina Valente, and
Barbra Streisand
Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
.
The Broadway cast ''Hair'' album, released on
RCA Records
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...
, topped the
US billboard charts for a year. The 1970 album ''DisinHAIRited'' was then released with songs that were cut from the revised production.
The Broadway production was a traumatic experience for Ragni. He became wealthy, his marriage broke up, and he became disengaged from mainstream society. He joined a
cult
Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...
and contributed money to the
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was a Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newto ...
and the
Yippies. Following the Broadway production, Ragni and Rado went to
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
and played their original roles in a production of ''Hair'' for five months, making changes to the show as they performed. When they returned to the Broadway production, Ragni's practice of spontaneously changing the show became a nuisance. In one incident, Ragni and Rado were arrested after walking nude down the aisle during a performance. At another time, there were guards outside the theatre who barred Ragni and Rado from entering. When the conflict was resolved, all Ragni's changes were written into the script and Ragni and Rado rejoined the show. Soon afterwards, Ragni joined the touring company, playing Berger in many cities.
In 1969, shortly after ''Hair''
's success, Ragni, Rado, and
Viva, the
Andy Warhol superstar, made the movie ''
Lions Love'', directed by
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda (; born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter and photographer.
Varda's work employed location shooting in an era when the limitations of sound technology made it easier ...
and made in Los Angeles. The film depicts the three stars, supposedly living together in Los Angeles while waiting for a film to start shooting. ''Lions Love'' is one of the best film records of Rado and Ragni. They did not appear in the 1979
film version of ''Hair'', which was directed by
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš "Miloš" Forman (; ; 18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018) was a Czech Americans, Czech-American film film director, director, screenwriter, actor, and professor who rose to fame in his native Czechoslovakia before emigrating to the Uni ...
and starring
Treat Williams as Berger. Neither Rado nor Ragni approved of the film, although it was well received by the public.
''Dude''
Ragni had been working on a musical called ''
Dude (The Highway Life)'' ever since ''Hair'' had opened. He had bulging notebooks filled with scribbles of dialogue and lyrics written in between meals at
Max's Kansas City
Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South in New York City, which became a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists, and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. It was opened by Mickey Ruskin (1933–1983) in Dece ...
. Combined with it was a 2,000-page script. He wrote the music to 50 of the songs in the show. Producing the musical would entail having "the interior of the
heater
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC ) is the use of various technologies to control the temperature, humidity, and purity of the air in an enclosed space. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. ...
scooped out and turned into a free-wheeling environmental theater in the round representing heaven and hell." According to
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
, "
the first run through, the stage, filled with two tons of top soil, filthied the actors and dumped dirt on everybody sitting in the first ten rows. People sneezed from the dust fumes; clouds of dirt rose into the air, making it difficult to see."
The 2,000 pages were cut down to 200, a second act was written, more songs were added, and although in a constant state of change and plagued with backstage problems the show opened at
The Broadway Theatre in October 1972. It was produced by Peter and Adela Holzer and starred
Nell Carter
Nell Carter (born Nell Ruth Hardy; September 13, 1948 – January 23, 2003) was an American actress and singer.
Carter began her career in 1970, singing in the theater, and later began work on television. She was best known for her role as Nell ...
,
Rae Allen,
Salome Bey,
Ralph Carter,
William Redfield, Nat Morris, and
Allan Nicholls, and closed after 16 performances. Before the opening, MacDermot's label Kilmarnock Records released an album of songs from the show sung by Salome Bey.
Post-''Dude''
In 1977 Ragni and Rado collaborated with Steve Margoshes on a new show called ''Jack Sound and His Dog Star Blowing His Final Trumpet on the Day of Doom'', produced off-Broadway by the
Ensemble Studio Theatre. It played a short run alongside an ill-fated Broadway revival of ''Hair'' that ran for forty-three performances and starred Ragni and Rado as the bogus cops who bust the show.
In the 1970s Ragni, Rado, MacDermot, and Margoshes collaborated on a new musical called ''Sun'', also called ''YMCA'', which ultimately was not produced. It was a 60-song, three-hour musical about "evolution, with an Odyssey plot"; an environmental musical about politics, pollution and the rain forests being cut down among other topics.
''Sun'' had been in development since the mid-1970s and an early version was staged for backers in 1976, directed by
John Vaccaro of
Theatre of the Ridiculous fame, with appearances by
Ruby Lynn Reyner, Annie-Joe Edwards and
Ellen Foley
Ellen Foley (born June 5, 1951) is an American singer and actress who has appeared on Broadway and television, where she co-starred in the hit NBC sitcom '' Night Court'' during its second season. In music, she has released five solo albums, bu ...
. Rado told
''New York'' Magazine that "''YMCA'' will do to the seventies what ''Hair'' did to the sixties," but the 1976 version never made it past rehearsals.
A three-disc cast recording was made after a performance at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall by independent company Rado Records.
Death
Ragni died of cancer in New York, aged 55, on July 10, 1991. At the time of his death, he and Rado were working on a sequel to ''Hair''. He is interred in the Holy Souls Cemetery,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
.
Gerome Ragni.
All Music. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
Personal life
On May 18, 1963, Ragni married Stephanie Williams. The union ended in divorce in 1970. They have a son named Erick.
In a 2008 interview with ''The Advocate
An advocate is a professional in the field of law.
The Advocate, The Advocates or Advocate may also refer to:
Magazines
* The Advocate (magazine), ''The Advocate'' (magazine), an LGBT magazine based in the United States
* ''The Harvard Advocate' ...
,''
Rado said that he and Ragni had been lovers, and described himself as omnisexual.[.
]
References
External links
Collection of articles on Gerome Ragni
*
*
*
Gerome Ragni papers, 1952-1984
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, in the Lincoln Center complex on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, New York City. Situated between the Metropolitan O ...
''Dude'' Articles Index.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ragni, Gerome
1935 births
1991 deaths
Male actors from Pittsburgh
Songwriters from Pennsylvania
Bisexual male writers
Bisexual male musicians
Bisexual singers
Bisexual songwriters
American LGBTQ singers
American LGBTQ songwriters
American bisexual male actors
American bisexual writers
American bisexual musicians
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
LGBTQ people from Pennsylvania
Singers from Pittsburgh
Catholic University of America alumni
American people of Italian descent
20th-century American male actors
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American LGBTQ people
20th-century American songwriters