Biography
Actress and vocalist Lisa Kirk sustained an extended professional path focused chiefly on nightclub performance, even as she originated supporting parts in several Broadway productions, took acting roles in television programs, issued occasional recordings, and contributed uncredited vocal work in Hollywood, supplying the singing voice for Rosalind Russell in the 1962 motion picture Gypsy. Born Elise Marie Kirk in Charleroi, PA, on February 25, 1925, she grew up in Roscoe, PA. Her father, George Kirk, performed in vaudeville and brought his daughter onstage during her childhood. While still a teenager, she trained in music and dance at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. By 1944 she had become the featured vocalist with Jimmy Palmer & His Orchestra in Baltimore.
Relocating to New York opened nightclub and theatrical engagements that led to a featured role in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Allegro; there she introduced the show’s standout number, “The Gentleman Is a Dope.” Although Allegro proved unsuccessful, premiering on October 10, 1947, and closing after 315 performances on July 10, 1948, the production established Kirk’s reputation. She participated in the original Broadway cast album issued by RCA Victor Records and soon received the second female lead in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, where she delivered the playful songs “Always True to You in My Fashion” and “Why Can’t You Behave.” That production opened December 30, 1948, and completed 1,077 performances before closing July 28, 1951. Kirk again appeared on the original Broadway cast recording, released by Columbia Records and a chart-topping success.
Years passed before she returned to Broadway, yet she signed with RCA Victor Records in 1949 and achieved two chart entries in 1950: the duet “Dearie” with Fran Warren and the duet “The Old Piano Roll Blues” with Eddie Cantor. Sepia Records later assembled these and additional pop sides she recorded for RCA between 1949 and 1952 on the unauthorized compact disc I Feel a Song Comin’ On. In May 1953 she took part in a sequence of 10-inch LPs pairing songs from one vintage musical on each side with those from another: Jumbo/Babes in Arms, Girl Crazy/Porgy & Bess, and Kiss Me, Kate/Anything Goes. Throughout the 1950s she rose to prominence as a leading nightclub performer while also guesting on television variety programs that included The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Jimmy Durante Show, The Walter Winchell Show, The Nat King Cole Show, and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. Excerpts from her repeated visits to Talk of the Town, later retitled The Ed Sullivan Show, appear on the album The Sullivan Years: An Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein issued by TVT Records. She further accumulated acting credits on dramatic anthology series such as Studio One, Kraft Television Theater, The Motorola Television Hour, and General Electric Theater.
Her nightclub repertoire was documented on her sole solo long-playing record, Lisa Kirk Sings at the Plaza, released by MGM Records in 1959. Sepia Records subsequently issued an unauthorized compact-disc reissue that added bonus tracks drawn from her early-1950s RCA sessions and various television transcriptions. Also in 1959 she recorded another version of Kiss Me, Kate, this time a studio-cast album for Capitol Records intended to reunite principal members of the original Broadway company, among them Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and present the score in stereo. One of her rare feature-film assignments was the anonymous dubbing of Rosalind Russell’s vocals for Gypsy, preserved on the accompanying soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records; another was a brief onscreen role in the 1968 Mel Brooks comedy The Producers. She reentered Broadway as a replacement performer in the 1963 musical Here’s Love. During the same decade she continued variety-show work on programs such as The Hollywood Palace and The Dean Martin Show and acted in an episode of Bewitched.
A severe automobile accident in the late 1960s interrupted her activities, yet she recovered and resumed her career in the early 1970s, reopening her nightclub engagements with a 1972 engagement at the St. Regis Sheraton Hotel in New York and accepting a role in Jerry Herman’s musical Mack & Mabel, which reached Broadway in fall 1974 and generated a cast album on ABC Records. She later recreated her performance of “Tap Your Troubles Away” for Herman’s album An Evening with Jerry Herman, released by Laureate Records. Her final Broadway appearance came in a revival of Noël Coward’s Design for Living that played from June 20, 1984, to January 20, 1985. In later years she sustained cabaret performances, among them an engagement at the Rainbow and Stars club atop Rockefeller Center in 1989. On May 21 of that year she took part in a concert staging of Porter’s Nymph Errant in London, preserved on an album released by EMI Records. These engagements ranked among her last. Lung cancer, diagnosed only weeks before her death, claimed her life at age 65 on November 11, 1990, in New York.
Relocating to New York opened nightclub and theatrical engagements that led to a featured role in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Allegro; there she introduced the show’s standout number, “The Gentleman Is a Dope.” Although Allegro proved unsuccessful, premiering on October 10, 1947, and closing after 315 performances on July 10, 1948, the production established Kirk’s reputation. She participated in the original Broadway cast album issued by RCA Victor Records and soon received the second female lead in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, where she delivered the playful songs “Always True to You in My Fashion” and “Why Can’t You Behave.” That production opened December 30, 1948, and completed 1,077 performances before closing July 28, 1951. Kirk again appeared on the original Broadway cast recording, released by Columbia Records and a chart-topping success.
Years passed before she returned to Broadway, yet she signed with RCA Victor Records in 1949 and achieved two chart entries in 1950: the duet “Dearie” with Fran Warren and the duet “The Old Piano Roll Blues” with Eddie Cantor. Sepia Records later assembled these and additional pop sides she recorded for RCA between 1949 and 1952 on the unauthorized compact disc I Feel a Song Comin’ On. In May 1953 she took part in a sequence of 10-inch LPs pairing songs from one vintage musical on each side with those from another: Jumbo/Babes in Arms, Girl Crazy/Porgy & Bess, and Kiss Me, Kate/Anything Goes. Throughout the 1950s she rose to prominence as a leading nightclub performer while also guesting on television variety programs that included The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Jimmy Durante Show, The Walter Winchell Show, The Nat King Cole Show, and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. Excerpts from her repeated visits to Talk of the Town, later retitled The Ed Sullivan Show, appear on the album The Sullivan Years: An Evening with Rodgers & Hammerstein issued by TVT Records. She further accumulated acting credits on dramatic anthology series such as Studio One, Kraft Television Theater, The Motorola Television Hour, and General Electric Theater.
Her nightclub repertoire was documented on her sole solo long-playing record, Lisa Kirk Sings at the Plaza, released by MGM Records in 1959. Sepia Records subsequently issued an unauthorized compact-disc reissue that added bonus tracks drawn from her early-1950s RCA sessions and various television transcriptions. Also in 1959 she recorded another version of Kiss Me, Kate, this time a studio-cast album for Capitol Records intended to reunite principal members of the original Broadway company, among them Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and present the score in stereo. One of her rare feature-film assignments was the anonymous dubbing of Rosalind Russell’s vocals for Gypsy, preserved on the accompanying soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records; another was a brief onscreen role in the 1968 Mel Brooks comedy The Producers. She reentered Broadway as a replacement performer in the 1963 musical Here’s Love. During the same decade she continued variety-show work on programs such as The Hollywood Palace and The Dean Martin Show and acted in an episode of Bewitched.
A severe automobile accident in the late 1960s interrupted her activities, yet she recovered and resumed her career in the early 1970s, reopening her nightclub engagements with a 1972 engagement at the St. Regis Sheraton Hotel in New York and accepting a role in Jerry Herman’s musical Mack & Mabel, which reached Broadway in fall 1974 and generated a cast album on ABC Records. She later recreated her performance of “Tap Your Troubles Away” for Herman’s album An Evening with Jerry Herman, released by Laureate Records. Her final Broadway appearance came in a revival of Noël Coward’s Design for Living that played from June 20, 1984, to January 20, 1985. In later years she sustained cabaret performances, among them an engagement at the Rainbow and Stars club atop Rockefeller Center in 1989. On May 21 of that year she took part in a concert staging of Porter’s Nymph Errant in London, preserved on an album released by EMI Records. These engagements ranked among her last. Lung cancer, diagnosed only weeks before her death, claimed her life at age 65 on November 11, 1990, in New York.
Albums
