Pamela Blair

Pamela Blair (December 5, 1949 – July 23, 2023) was an American actress born in Bennington, Vermont, to Edgar Joseph and Geraldine Marie (née Cummings) Blair. She is best known for originating the role of Val in the landmark musical A Chorus Line and for a career spanning Broadway, television, and film from 1968 to 1996 and beyond.

Blair grew up in a small town and studied dance and played sports from an early age, with ambitions of becoming a Radio City Rockette. At sixteen, she relocated to New York City to attend the National Academy of Ballet during her senior year of high school, and she subsequently studied acting at HB Studio. Her professional career began after a friend at a dance class informed her that choreographer Michael Bennett was seeking dancers for Promises, Promises; Blair auditioned and was hired. She later reflected on her early struggles, noting that she had once worked as a chambermaid in a Vermont motel. She continued building her résumé with Seesaw, another Bennett production, and appeared in Sugar, the stage musical adaptation of Some Like It Hot, in which she played Sugar Kane, the role originated on screen by Marilyn Monroe. She also played Curly's Wife, the sole female role, in the James Earl Jones Broadway revival of Of Mice and Men, a production that subsequently opened at the Kennedy Center to critical acclaim.

In 1974, Bennett invited Blair to participate in the workshops that gave rise to A Chorus Line. The character of Valerie Clark was developed in large part from Blair's own life, though the detail involving surgical enhancement was drawn from another dancer, Mitzi Hamilton. Val's combination of an angelic appearance and an irreverent personality had particularly appealed to Bennett, and the character introduces the song "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three." Along with the rest of the cast, Blair received the 1976 Theatre World Special Award for Ensemble Performance for the production.

Following A Chorus Line, Blair originated the role of Amber, later renamed Angel, in the 1978 musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The performance earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination, and she can be heard on the cast recording as the lead voice in "Hard Candy Christmas," though the song "Bus from Amarillo" was removed from her before the show opened. Her subsequent Broadway credits included King of Hearts, in the role originated on screen by Geneviève Bujold; Clelia in The Nerd; and Joanne in A Few Good Men, which was directed by her then-estranged husband, Don Scardino. In 2006, she returned to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the lead role of Miss Mona for the Phoenix Theater's production, directed by Michael Barnard.

Blair married actor and director Don Scardino in 1984; the couple divorced in 1991. On television, she made recurring appearances on soap operas including Loving, Another World, Ryan's Hope, and All My Children, the last of which brought her a Daytime Emmy nomination. She guest-starred on Law & Order, The Cosby Show, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, on which she played Sabrina's mother after relocating to Hollywood, California. Her film work included Mighty Aphrodite, directed by Woody Allen; 21 Grams, with Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro; Before and After, with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson; and Annie, in which she played the maid Annette. She also appeared opposite Jodie Foster in the television film Svengali and in the Lifetime movie-of-the-week Maneater. Later in her career, Blair took on regional credits including the role of Heddi La Rue in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. She eventually settled in Arizona, where she owned and operated a Therapeutic and Myofascial Massage Studio for athletes. Blair died in Phoenix on July 23, 2023, at the age of 73.