Career
Although he is most widely known for his television roles and he continues to be seen frequently in guest-starring roles on television today, Garrison is primarily a theatre actor, particularly in musicals. He has appeared in numerous productions around the United States, including many Broadway shows. His Broadway appearances include A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine for which he received a Tony nomination, Titanic, Torch Song Trilogy, The Pirates of Penzance, Bells are Ringing and Off-Broadway in I Do! I Do!. He also has many recordings of various musicals to his singing credit.
Garrison played Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls (national tour), the Devil in Randy Newman's Faust, Henry Carr in Travesties (Williamstown), Frosch in Die Fledermaus (Santa Fe Opera), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Wicked (national tour) and Charley in the Arena Stage revival of Merrily We Roll Along for which he received the Helen Hayes Award. He was also in a 1996 Pasadena production of You Never Know at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Garrison has also appeared in numerous roles on television. In 1984 and 1985, he starred as Norman Lamb on the sitcom It's Your Move. That show lasted for only one season, but in 1987, Garrison landed his best-known role, portraying Steve Rhoades, next door neighbor to the Bundy family on the popular sitcom Married... with Children. He remained with the show for 3½ seasons.
Garrison enjoyed his years playing Steve Rhoades, but he missed performing in live theater, and asked to be let out of his contract. Despite this, he was a regular on a short-lived NBC sitcom, Working It Out, in 1990 shortly after his exit from Married... with Children. A going-away present from the producers of Married... with Children was a blown-up police mug shot of himself as Rhoades, with the caption "Gotta sing, gotta dance, gotta fucking starve to death." Nonetheless, Garrison parted on good terms, returning four times in subsequent seasons (and the reunion special) detailing the career Rhoades had pursued since he'd last been seen. However, he was not interviewed nor present at the 2009 TV Land Award show when the entire cast was honored. An idea for a Married with Children spinoff called Radio Free Trumaine was proposed, in which Garrison would reprise his role as Steve Rhoades being the Dean of Trumaine University, and would have David Faustino as the leading man. However, the show, despite a backdoor pilot within the main series, never came to fruition.
Other television credits include Law & Order, The Practice, Without a Trace, Everybody Loves Raymond, NYPD Blue, Judging Amy, Murphy Brown, Murder, She Wrote, L.A. Law, Tom Clancy's Op-Center and, for PBS Great Performances, On the Town with the London Symphony Orchestra and Ira Gershwin at 100: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall. Garrison also participated in several installments of The $25,000 Pyramid as the celebrity guest in 1988. David Garrison also appeared in the George Romero film Creepshow, in "The Crate" segment where he plays a college dean.
Garrison recently starred in a new play, Red Remembers, which played at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts from September 11 – November 1, 2009.
Garrison also starred in Second Stage Theatre's By The Way, Meet Vera Stark by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage co-starring Stephanie J. Block, and Sanaa Lathan which closed June 12, 2011.
He is currently starring in Silence! The Musical by Jon and Al Kaplan as Hannibal Lector, co-starring Jenn Harris.
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