Richard Kiley - Career

Career

His work on stage included Kismet; Richard Rodgers's first musical for which he wrote both music and lyrics, No Strings; the Buddy Hackett vehicle I Had a Ball; and the lead roles in Redhead, Man of La Mancha, and the play The Incomparable Max.

He starred in the television play, Patterns (Kraft Television Theatre), which aired live on January 12, 1955. It caused a sensation, and won an Emmy for its screenwriter Rod Serling.

He won Tony Awards as Best Actor in a musical for the first two. The dual role of the middle-aged Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote is one of the few musical roles which entails both the role of the leading man and that of a character actor at the same time, rather than the conventional handsome hero who wins the girl. Kiley had gone on record as saying that he had grown tired of the regular "leading man" role but was always grateful for having been given the chance to play it. Tony Martinez played Sancho Panza to Kiley's Don Quixote.

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