Donna McKechnie

Donna McKechnie, born November 16, 1942, in Pontiac, Michigan, is an American musical theater dancer, singer, actress, and choreographer whose Broadway career extended from 1961 to 2003. The daughter of Donald Bruce McKechnie and Carolyn Ruth Johnson, she began ballet classes at age five, and at age eight, after seeing the British film The Red Shoes, set her sights on a career as a ballerina. She trained for many years at the Rose Marie Floyd School of Dance in Royal Oak, Michigan, and later studied theater at HB Studio in New York City.

At seventeen, despite her parents' objections, McKechnie moved to New York City. Following an unsuccessful audition for the American Ballet Theatre, she joined the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall, though she left on the day of dress rehearsal to perform summer stock at the Carousel Theater in Framingham, Massachusetts. Early commercial work included a Welch's grape juice advertisement and the first L'eggs stockings commercial. A stint in a touring production of West Side Story preceded her 1961 Broadway debut in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, where she first encountered choreographer Bob Fosse and his wife, Gwen Verdon. She subsequently played Philia in a Philadelphia production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and later reprised that role in the national tour, which starred Jerry Lester as Pseudolus, with Paul Hartman, Erik Rhodes, Arnold Stang, and Edward Everett Horton, produced by Martin Tahse.

McKechnie became a featured dancer on the NBC music series Hullabaloo, where she met choreographer Michael Bennett, who would become both her husband and a central figure in her professional life. In April 1968, she returned to Broadway in The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, a musical adaptation of Leo Rosten's short story collection. That production led to a featured role in Burt Bacharach and Hal David's Promises, Promises, choreographed by Bennett, in which she performed alongside Baayork Lee and Margo Sappington in the number "Turkey Lurkey Time," drawing significant critical attention for the first time. A tour in Call Me Madam, starring Ethel Merman, followed.

Bennett again featured McKechnie prominently in Stephen Sondheim's Company in 1970, where she performed "Tick-Tock." After leaving the Broadway cast, she reprised the role in the Los Angeles and London companies of the production. She toured in the 1971 revival of On the Town as Ivy, and in March 1973 she both choreographed and performed in the celebrated one-night concert Sondheim: A Musical Tribute at the Shubert Theatre in New York. In 1974, she co-starred with Richard Kiley and Bob Fosse in the film adaptation of The Little Prince.

McKechnie's most celebrated work grew out of Bennett's group therapy-style workshops, which evolved into the Broadway production of A Chorus Line. She portrayed Cassie Ferguson, a character drawn substantially from her own life, as was the role of Maggie Winslow. Her signature number in the show, "The Music and the Mirror," was tailored to her unusually wide vocal range. Originally conceived with four male co-stars sharing the stage, the number was reworked just four previews before opening night, at McKechnie's urging, so that she performed it alone. The performance earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical at the 30th Tony Awards in 1976, along with the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical and a Theatre World Special Award, all in the same year. She and Bennett married in 1976, though they separated after a few months and eventually divorced, remaining close friends until his death from AIDS in 1987.

In 1980, McKechnie was diagnosed with arthritis and told she would never dance again. She pursued physical, psychological, and holistic treatments and, by 1986, had recovered sufficiently to return to the Broadway company of A Chorus Line. In 1983, she choreographed the NFL's Football's Fabulous Females, The Los Angeles Raiderettes, as the team made its debut in Los Angeles, and she participated in the Chorus Line celebration marking its then record-breaking Broadway run that September. During the later 1980s, she toured in Sweet Charity and Annie Get Your Gun and appeared in a London revival of Can-Can.

Her television work included a recurring role on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, where she played Amanda Harris and Olivia Corey from 1969 to 1970. She made guest appearances on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Cheers, where she played Debra, the ex-wife of Sam Malone. She also appeared in multiple episodes of Fame as Suzi Laird. In 1983, she played Cynthia Bailey in season two of Family Ties, a divorcee planning to relocate with her son Keith, played by David Faustino, away from his father Richard, played by James Sutorius.

In the early 1990s, McKechnie appeared off-Broadway in the revue Cut the Ribbons and in Annie Warbucks, a sequel to Annie. In 1993, she reunited with most of the original Company cast for three concert performances. Her 1996 Broadway appearance in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical State Fair earned her the Fred Astaire Award for Best Female Dancer. That same year she appeared in You Never Know at the Pasadena Playhouse. In February 1997, she played Phyllis Rogers Stone in a concert performance of Follies at London's Drury Lane Theatre, and the following year took on the role of Sally Durant Plummer in a production of the same show at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. She also starred opposite Carol Lawrence in the Los Angeles and New York production of Joni Fritz's Girl's Room, produced by Dennis Grimaldi and directed and choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett.

In 2001, McKechnie originated the role of Lela Rogers, mother of Ginger Rogers, in the world premiere of Ginger: The Musical. The following year she starred in the pre-Broadway production of the Jerry Herman musical revue Showtune. She has also toured in a one-woman show, Inside the Music, combining songs, dances, and personal anecdotes about her career and her recovery from arthritis, directed by her former Chorus Line castmate Thommie Walsh. Her autobiography, Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life, written with Greg Lawrence, was published by Simon and Schuster on August 29, 2006, weeks before the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line opened on October 5 of that year.

In June 2010, McKechnie performed at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. In 2015, she served as the standby for Chita Rivera in Kander and Ebb's The Visit on Broadway, though she never went on. In the fall of 2017, she appeared as Mabel in The Pajama Game at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. On March 5, 2024, McKechnie joined the Broadway cast of Wicked in the role of Madame Morrible, departing the production in March 2025. She was also a faculty member at HB Studio in New York City.