Gerome Ragni
Encyclopedia
Gerome Bernard Ragni was an American actor, singer and songwriter
, best known as the co-author of the groundbreaking 1960s Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.
, one of ten children from an impoverished Italian family
He attended Georgetown University
and The Catholic University of America
. It was at the latter that he found a flair for the dramatic and he began studying acting with Philip Burton. Ragni made his acting debut in Washington, D.C.
, in 1954 playing Father Corr in Shadow and Substance
. From then on he acted whenever he could find work. In 1963 he appeared in the New York
production of the hit play War
, at the Village South Theatre
, for which he won the Barter Theatre Award for Outstanding Actor. On May 18, 1963, he married his longtime girlfriend Stephanie. They have a son named Erick.
in the Broadway
production of Hamlet
, which starred Richard Burton
. As a result he appeared in the Richard Burton's Hamlet
|film version of the show released by Warner Bros.
in 1964. That same year he made his first Off-Broadway
appearance in the anti capital-punishment musical Hang Down Your Head and Die at the Mayfair Theatre with friend James Rado, a fellow actor who was studying with Lee Strasberg
. It only played one performance before being shut down by the government. In a 2008 interview with The Advocate
Rado described himself as omnisexual and Ragni's lover.
Soon after this he took on the role of Tom in the smash-hit The Knack
at the New Theatre of Brooklyn, later appearing in the touring company of the show with Rado. At the show's Chicago
run that year Rado and Ragni tried to revive Hang Down Your Head and Die with as much of the script as they remembered. They also planned to introduce some new songs and material in a collaboration with Corky Siegel
and Jim Schwall
, of the Siegel-Schwall Band
, whom they met playing in a beatnik
coffee house off the Harper Street strip. They spent time writing ideas for the show which was to be a four-man presentation performed by Rado, Ragni, Schwall and Siegel in a house on the South Side of Chicago and an apartment on Stony Island Avenue
. Rado and Ragni rented the Harper Theatre, where The Knack
was showing, to perform the musical. Two weeks later the company went back to New York and they had to leave, abandoning their plans for Hang down your head and die.
and its experimental techniques since it was originally part of the Living Theatre in 1962. He had come up with the new name in the split from the Living Theatre. In 1966 The Open Theatre began rehearsals for the Megan Terry
play Viet Rock. Ragni took a leading role in the show and was in the cast when the play opened at the Martinique Theatre in New York where it had a successful run.
The show, and the experimental techniques associated with it, gave him the inspiration to work with Rado on a musical about the hippies and their environment. Research had to be undertaken so they associated with a group of youths in the East Village
who were dropping out and dodging the draft
. They talked to characters in the streets and people they knew, read lots of articles in the press and media about hippies and kids being kicked out of school for growing their hair long. Soon the 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", "Aquarius", "Easy to be Hard", "Good Morning Starshine" and "Where Do I Go?" — and a first draft of the show titled Hair were complete. Two of these thirteen songs were removed, many were revised and titles changed and more were written.
Once they had a complete draft of the show that they liked they brought it to producer Nat Shapiro
for consideration. His response to the songs was "Where's the music?". He then put them together with composer Galt MacDermot
, who was given the script and came back with music for the handful of songs that were then specified in the script. Their agent, Janet Roberts, then tried to sell it to Broadway producers but it was rejected by all. Joseph Papp
, of the New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre, called and said he wanted to produce it at his new theatre on Lafayette Street. Gerald Freedman was the artistic director and was signed on to direct the first production of the show. On October 29, 1967 Hair opened at The Public Theater with Ragni as Berger, MacDermot as one of the phony cops that bust the show at the end of the first act, and Rado as Claude (for the first ten performances only). Michael Butler
attended the opening and many subsequent performances and was dissatisfied that Rado was not regularly playing Claude as he felt Rado had a natural affinity for the part.
Butler was immediately interested and wanted to move it to Broadway and bought the rights from Papp for $50,000 and got ready to stage a whole new grander production with Tom O'Horgan, who Ragni knew from off-Broadway, directing. In the meantime the show moved to a nightclub in Midtown, called Cheetah, where it had a month-long run. When O'Horgan signed there was a cast overhaul and Alvin Ailey
was hired as choreographer with Bertrand Castelli sharing directorial duties as executive producer. Ailey left the show early on to be replaced by choreographer Julie Arenal, assistant to Anna Sokolow, who had choreographed the off-Broadway run.
On April 29, 1968 the show re-opened in its complete revised form at the Biltmore Theatre
on Broadway. Rado and Ragni reprised their roles from the off-Broadway production. MacDermot was now the show's musical director. The songs became hit singles for Liza Minnelli
, Nelson Riddle
, The Staples Singers, MacDermot himself, Quincy Jones
, Three Dog Night
, The Cowsills
, Madeline Bell
, Paul Jones
, Sonja Kristina, The 5th Dimension, Oliver
, Caterina Valente
,and Barbra Streisand
. The Broadway cast Hair album on RCA Records
topped the US charts for a year. The 1970 album DisinHAIRited contained earlier songs cut from the revised production.
The Broadway production was a traumatic experience for Ragni. He became wealthy, his marriage broke up and he fell from mainstream society. He joined a Christian cult and contributed money to the Black Panther Party
and Yippie causes. Not long after the Broadway production he and Rado went to Los Angeles
and played their signature roles in that production. They stayed for five months, making changes to the show as they performed. When they returned to the Broadway production his habit of making changes to the show without telling the staff became a bit of a nuisance. In one incident they were arrested after walking nude down the aisle with Rado during a performance. At another point there were guards outside the theatre with Ragni and Rado barred from entering. When the conflict was resolved all the changes were written into the script and they rejoined the show. Soon after Ragni moved into the touring companies, playing Berger for many performances in many cities. He very nearly became the role that he was playing onstage.
Shortly after Hair
became a big hit Ragni, Rado, and Viva (perhaps the biggest of Andy Warhol
's "superstars") made the movie Lions Love in Los Angeles, directed by Agnes Varda
. Full of improvised scenes involving the three stars, who are supposedly living together in L.A. while waiting for a film to start shooting, the movie is probably one of the best film records of Rado and Ragni. The pair did not appear in the film version Hair
, directed by Milos Forman
in 1979. Both Rado and Ragni were quite upset by the film and they never approved of it, although it was generally well received.
. Combined it was a 2,000-page script. He discussed doing the score with MacDermot after the L.A. opening, but MacDermot was doing Two Gentlemen of Verona
at the time. Once done, he wrote the music to 50 of the songs in the show. Producing the musical would entail having the interior of the Broadway Theatre scooped out and turned into a free-wheeling environmental theatre representing heaven and hell. 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 starring Nell Carter
, Rae Allen
, Salome Bey
, Ralph Carter
, Nat Morris, and Allan Nicholls, and closed after 16 performances. The cast album on Columbia Records
did not fare very well on the charts either.
In 1990 Ragni, Rado, MacDermot, and Steve Margoshes, collaborated on a new musical called Sun, also known as YMCA. It was an environmental musical about politics, pollution and the rain forests being cut down amongst other topics. A three-disc cast recording was made after a performance at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall
by independent company Rado Records. Sun has been in development since the mid-1970s and an early version was staged for backers in 1976, directed by John Vaccaro with appearances by Ruby Lynn Reyner and Annie-Joe Edwards. The script is based on a play by Joyce Greller, the New York writer.
Revision of Rado's musical Rainbow Rainbeam Radio Roadshow: The Ghost of Vietnam (also known as Billy Earth: The New Rainbow and The White Haunted House: American Soldier) was also undertaken.
Ragni died of cancer in New York age 55 before the revised musical sequel to Hair, by Rado and his brother Ted, could be undertaken.
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
, best known as the co-author of the groundbreaking 1960s Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical.
Early life
Ragni was born in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, one of ten children from an impoverished Italian family
He attended Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
and The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America is a private university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by the U.S. Catholic bishops...
. It was at the latter that he found a flair for the dramatic and he began studying acting with Philip Burton. Ragni made his acting debut in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, in 1954 playing Father Corr in Shadow and Substance
Shadow and Substance
Shadow and Substance is an award-winning four-act play written in 1937 by Paul Vincent Carroll. In 1938 it won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for best foreign play. First published by Samuel French in 1944....
. From then on he acted whenever he could find work. In 1963 he appeared in the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
production of the hit play War
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, at the Village South Theatre
Village South Theatre
The Village South Theatre was an Off-Broadway theatre in New York City that was active during the 1960s.Located on Vandam Street in Greenwich Village, the theatre opened in 1962 with the original production of Jean Erdman's award-winning musical play The Coach with the Six Insides which was based...
, for which he won the Barter Theatre Award for Outstanding Actor. On May 18, 1963, he married his longtime girlfriend Stephanie. They have a son named Erick.
Broadway/stock debut
1964 found him playing a bit part at the Lunt-Fontanne TheatreLunt-Fontanne Theatre
The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 205 West 46th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by the architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings, it was built by producer Charles Dillingham and opened as the Globe Theatre, in honor of London's Shakespearean playhouse, on...
in the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, which starred Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
. As a result he appeared in the Richard Burton's Hamlet
Richard Burton's Hamlet
Richard Burton’s Hamlet is a common name for both the Broadway production of William Shakespeare's tragedy that played from April 9 through August 8 of 1964 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and for the filmed record of it that has been released theatrically and on home video.-Background:The production...
|film version of the show released by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
in 1964. That same year he made his first Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
appearance in the anti capital-punishment musical Hang Down Your Head and Die at the Mayfair Theatre with friend James Rado, a fellow actor who was studying with Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg
Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...
. It only played one performance before being shut down by the government. In a 2008 interview with The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
Rado described himself as omnisexual and Ragni's lover.
Soon after this he took on the role of Tom in the smash-hit The Knack
The Knack
The Knack was an American New Wave rock quartet based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, "My Sharona", an international number one hit in 1979.-Founding :...
at the New Theatre of Brooklyn, later appearing in the touring company of the show with Rado. At the show's Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
run that year Rado and Ragni tried to revive Hang Down Your Head and Die with as much of the script as they remembered. They also planned to introduce some new songs and material in a collaboration with Corky Siegel
Corky Siegel
Mark Paul "Corky" Siegel 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 classical music...
and Jim Schwall
Jim Schwall
Jim Schwall is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as a co-founder and member of the Siegel-Schwall Band.-Musical career:...
, of the Siegel-Schwall Band
Siegel-Schwall Band
The Siegel–Schwall Band is an American electric blues band from Chicago, Illinois. The band was formed in 1964 by Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall , and still tours occasionally.-History:...
, whom they met playing in a beatnik
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
coffee house off the Harper Street strip. They spent time writing ideas for the show which was to be a four-man presentation 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
Stony Island Avenue is a major thoroughfare 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 the Calumet in the southern suburbs, running...
. Rado and Ragni rented the Harper Theatre, where The Knack
The Knack
The Knack was an American New Wave rock quartet based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with their first single, "My Sharona", an international number one hit in 1979.-Founding :...
was showing, to perform the musical. Two weeks later the company went back to New York and they had to leave, abandoning their plans for Hang down your head and die.
Hair
Ragni had been involved with The Open TheaterThe Open Theater
The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973.It was founded in New York City by a group of former students of acting teacher Nola Chilton, and joined shortly thereafter by director Joseph Chaikin, formerly of The Living Theatre, and Peter Feldman...
and its experimental techniques since it was originally part of the Living Theatre in 1962. He had come up with the new name in the split from the Living Theatre. In 1966 The Open Theatre began rehearsals for the Megan Terry
Megan Terry
Megan Terry is an internationally known playwright and prolific writer. Terry, born in Seattle, Washington, United States in 1932, had a love for the theatre since the age of seven and became involved with the theatre at an early age...
play Viet Rock. Ragni took a leading role in the show and was in the cast when the play opened at the Martinique Theatre in New York where it had a successful run.
The show, and the experimental techniques associated with it, gave him the inspiration to work with Rado on a musical about the hippies and their environment. Research had to be undertaken so they associated with a group of youths in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
who were dropping out and dodging the draft
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
. They talked to characters in the streets and people they knew, read lots of articles in the press and media about hippies and kids being kicked out of school for growing their hair long. Soon the 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", "Aquarius", "Easy to be Hard", "Good Morning Starshine" and "Where Do I Go?" — and a first draft of the show titled Hair were complete. Two of these thirteen songs were removed, many were revised and titles changed and more were written.
Once they had a complete draft of the show that they liked they brought it to producer Nat Shapiro
Nat Shapiro
Nat Shapiro was an American jazz writer and record producer.Shapiro worked in the music industry from the late 1940s; he was a promotional director for Mercury Records in 1948-50, served as head of public relations for BMI in 1955-56, and was the A&R leader for Columbia Records from 1956-66,...
for consideration. His response to the songs was "Where's the music?". He then put them together with composer Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot
Galt MacDermot is a Canadian composer, pianist and writer of musical theatre. He won a Grammy Award for the song African Waltz in 1960. His most successful musicals have been Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona...
, who was given the script and came back with music for the handful of songs that were then specified in the script. Their agent, Janet Roberts, then tried to sell it to Broadway producers but it was rejected by all. Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp
Joseph Papp was an American theatrical producer and director. Papp established The Public Theater in what had been the Astor Library Building in downtown New York . "The Public," as it is known, has many small theatres within it...
, of the New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre, called and said he wanted to produce it at his new theatre on Lafayette Street. Gerald Freedman was the artistic director and was signed on to direct the first production of the show. On October 29, 1967 Hair opened at The Public Theater with Ragni as Berger, MacDermot as one of the phony cops that bust the show at the end of the first act, and Rado as Claude (for the first ten performances only). Michael Butler
Michael Butler (producer)
Michael Butler is an American theatrical producer best known for bringing the rock musical Hair from the Public Theater to Broadway in 1968. During his time as Hair producer he was dubbed by the press as "the hippie millionaire"...
attended the opening and many subsequent performances and was dissatisfied that Rado was not regularly playing Claude as he felt Rado had a natural affinity for the part.
Butler was immediately interested and wanted to move it to Broadway and bought the rights from Papp for $50,000 and got ready to stage a whole new grander production with Tom O'Horgan, who Ragni knew from off-Broadway, directing. In the meantime the show moved to a nightclub in Midtown, called Cheetah, where it had a month-long run. When O'Horgan signed there was a cast overhaul and Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey
Alvin Ailey, Jr. was an American choreographer and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance...
was hired as choreographer with Bertrand Castelli sharing directorial duties as executive producer. Ailey left the show early on to be replaced by choreographer Julie Arenal, assistant to Anna Sokolow, who had choreographed the off-Broadway run.
On April 29, 1968 the show re-opened in its complete revised form at the Biltmore Theatre
Biltmore Theatre
The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 261 West 47th Street in midtown-Manhattan.-History:...
on Broadway. Rado and Ragni reprised their roles from the off-Broadway production. MacDermot was now the show's musical director. The songs became hit singles for Liza Minnelli
Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....
, Nelson Riddle
Nelson Riddle
Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...
, The Staples Singers, MacDermot himself, Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
, Three Dog Night
Three Dog Night
Three Dog Night is an American rock band best known for their music from 1968 to 1975. During that time the band charted 21 Billboard top 40 hits in America, three of which reached Number One...
, The Cowsills
The Cowsills
The Cowsills are an American singing group from Newport, Rhode Island. They specialized in harmonies and the ability to sing and play music at an early age. The band was formed in the spring of 1965 by brothers Bill, Bob, and Barry, then shortly thereafter added John...
, Madeline Bell
Madeline Bell
Madeline Bell is an American soul singer, who became famous as a performer in the United Kingdom during the 1960s, having arrived from the US in the gospel show Black Nativity in 1962, with vocal group The Bradford Singers.-Career:She worked as a session singer, most notably backing for Dusty...
, Paul Jones
Paul Jones (singer)
Paul Jones is an English singer, actor, harmonica player, and radio personality and television presenter.-Career:As P. P...
, Sonja Kristina, The 5th Dimension, Oliver
Oliver (William Oliver Swofford)
William Oliver Swofford , known professionally as Oliver, was an American pop singer. Born in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, he began singing as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1960s...
, Caterina Valente
Caterina Valente
Caterina Valente is a singer, dancer, and actress. She was born into an Italian artist family; her father Giuseppe was a well-known accordion player, her mother, Maria Valente, a musical clown...
,and Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
. The Broadway cast Hair album on RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
topped the US charts for a year. The 1970 album DisinHAIRited contained earlier songs cut from the revised production.
The Broadway production was a traumatic experience for Ragni. He became wealthy, his marriage broke up and he fell from mainstream society. He joined a Christian cult and contributed money to the Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
and Yippie causes. Not long after the Broadway production he and Rado went to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and played their signature roles in that production. They stayed for five months, making changes to the show as they performed. When they returned to the Broadway production his habit of making changes to the show without telling the staff became a bit of a nuisance. In one incident they were arrested after walking nude down the aisle with Rado during a performance. At another point there were guards outside the theatre with Ragni and Rado barred from entering. When the conflict was resolved all the changes were written into the script and they rejoined the show. Soon after Ragni moved into the touring companies, playing Berger for many performances in many cities. He very nearly became the role that he was playing onstage.
Shortly after Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
became a big hit Ragni, Rado, and Viva (perhaps the biggest of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's "superstars") made the movie Lions Love in Los Angeles, directed by Agnes Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
. Full of improvised scenes involving the three stars, who are supposedly living together in L.A. while waiting for a film to start shooting, the movie is probably one of the best film records of Rado and Ragni. The pair did not appear in the film version Hair
Hair (film)
Hair is a 1979 American film adaptation of the 1968 Broadway musical of the same name about a Vietnam war draftee who meets and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to the army induction center...
, directed by Milos Forman
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
in 1979. Both Rado and Ragni were quite upset by the film and they never approved of it, although it was generally well received.
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 inbetween meals at Max's Kansas CityMax's Kansas City
Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South, in New York City, which was a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s.-Origin of name:...
. Combined it was a 2,000-page script. He discussed doing the score with MacDermot after the L.A. opening, but MacDermot was doing Two Gentlemen of Verona
Two Gentlemen of Verona (musical)
Two Gentlemen of Verona is a rock musical, with a book by John Guare and Mel Shapiro, lyrics by Guare and music by Galt MacDermot, based on the Shakespeare comedy of the same name....
at the time. Once done, he wrote the music to 50 of the songs in the show. Producing the musical would entail having the interior of the Broadway Theatre scooped out and turned into a free-wheeling environmental theatre representing heaven and hell. 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
The Broadway Theatre
The Broadway Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 1681 Broadway in midtown-Manhattan....
in October 1972. It was produced by Peter and Adela Holzer and starring Nell Carter
Nell Carter
Nell Carter was an American singer, and film, stage, and television actress. She won a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin, as well as an Emmy Award for her reprisal of the role on television...
, Rae Allen
Rae Allen
Rae Allen is an American stage, film and television actress.-Biography:Allen was born as Raffaella Julia Theresa Abruzzo in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Julia and Joseph Abruzzo...
, Salome Bey
Salome Bey
Salome Bey, CM is an American actress, singer-songwriter, and composer who has lived in Toronto, Ontario since 1966. In 2005, she was made an honorary Member of the Order of Canada....
, Ralph Carter
Ralph Carter
Ralph Carter is an American actor, and singerCarter is best known for his work as a child and teenager, both in the Broadway musical Raisin and as the character Michael Evans, the youngest member of the Evans family, on the 1970s sitcom Good Times...
, Nat Morris, and Allan Nicholls, and closed after 16 performances. The cast album on Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
did not fare very well on the charts either.
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 in total and starred Ragni and Rado as the bogus cops who bust the show.In 1990 Ragni, Rado, MacDermot, and Steve Margoshes, collaborated on a new musical called Sun, also known as YMCA. It was an environmental musical about politics, pollution and the rain forests being cut down amongst other topics. A three-disc cast recording was made after a performance at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
by independent company Rado Records. Sun has been in development since the mid-1970s and an early version was staged for backers in 1976, directed by John Vaccaro with appearances by Ruby Lynn Reyner and Annie-Joe Edwards. The script is based on a play by Joyce Greller, the New York writer.
Revision of Rado's musical Rainbow Rainbeam Radio Roadshow: The Ghost of Vietnam (also known as Billy Earth: The New Rainbow and The White Haunted House: American Soldier) was also undertaken.
Ragni died of cancer in New York age 55 before the revised musical sequel to Hair, by Rado and his brother Ted, could be undertaken.