Carol Lawrence

Carol Lawrence, born Carolina Maria Laraia on September 5, 1932, in Melrose Park, Illinois, is an American actress whose career has spanned Broadway, television, and concert performance. Both of her parents were of Italian ancestry, with her father born in Trivigno, in the province of Potenza, and her maternal family originating from the same town. She graduated from Proviso Township High School in Maywood, Illinois, attended Northwestern University for one year, and then left to pursue a performing career.

Lawrence made her Broadway debut in 1951 as a Ted Adair Dancer in the revue Borscht Capades, which also featured Joel Grey. Her breakthrough came six years later when she originated the role of Maria in the 1957 Broadway production of West Side Story, earning a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical — a category in which she lost to Barbara Cook for The Music Man. She held the role for two years, and after appearing in the short-lived 1959 production Saratoga, she returned to West Side Story for its 1960 season. That same year she received the Theatre World Award in recognition of her work in the production. Also in 1960, she recorded the album Tonight at 8:30, which included studio versions of "Tonight" and "Something's Coming," both drawn from West Side Story.

Her subsequent Broadway credits included Subways Are for Sleeping, Night Life, and I Do! I Do!, in which she joined the production in 1967 as a replacement in the role of She/Agnes. She appeared in Kiss of the Spider Woman from 1992 to 1993, again as a replacement, taking on the roles of Spider Woman and Aurora. Her most recent Broadway credit is serving as standby for Lauren Bacall in the 1999 Noël Coward production Waiting in the Wings. Lawrence was also honored with the Harvard Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award in 1960 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Beyond Broadway, Lawrence performed extensively in regional theatre. At The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri, she played Fanny Brice in Funny Girl in 1975, Charity in Sweet Charity in 1977, and Lucille Early in No, No, Nanette in 1990. Other stage work included the title role in Mame at the Helen Hayes Center for Performing Arts in Nyack, New York in 2000, Guenevere in Camelot opposite her then-husband Robert Goulet, Do I Hear a Waltz? at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2001, and Follies at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles in 2002. In 2013, she appeared Off-Broadway at the Westside Theatre Downstairs in Jason Odell Williams's play Handle with Care.

Lawrence maintained a substantial television career alongside her stage work. She appeared in numerous dramatic series, including Rawhide, Combat!, Wagon Train, The Fugitive, The Big Valley, Hawaii Five-O, Marcus Welby M.D., Medical Center, Kung Fu, Mannix, Murder She Wrote, Saved by the Bell, and Sex and the City. From 1991 to 1993, she played the recurring role of matriarch Angela Eckart on General Hospital. In 1999, she appeared in a cameo role in the television film remake of Jason Miller's That Championship Season, playing Claire's mother, a part written specifically for her. She also hosted five episodes of Chef du Jour for the Food Network, cooking from her own cookbook, I Remember Pasta, which set a sales record on the Home Shopping Network.

In her personal life, Lawrence was married three times. Her first marriage, to Cosmo Allegretti, lasted from January 1956 until it was annulled in January 1959. She then married fellow performer Robert Goulet in 1963; the couple had two sons, Christopher, born in 1964, and Michael Goulet, born in 1966, before divorcing in 1981. Her third marriage, to Greg Guydus, ran from March 1982 to December 1984. In her 1990 autobiography, Carol Lawrence: The Backstage Story, written with Phyllis Hobe, she accused Goulet of alcoholism and abusive behavior toward her and their children. Two days before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on November 20, 1963, Lawrence was among a group that visited the White House, accompanying DNC Chairman John Bailey, DNC Vice-chairwoman Margaret B. Price, DNC Secretary Dorothy Vredenburgh Bush, Lena Horne, Richard Adler, and Sidney Salomon.