Valerie Harper - Broadway Dancer and Improv

Broadway Dancer and Improv

Harper began as a dancer/chorus girl on Broadway in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She began with the musical Li'l Abner and went on to perform in several Broadway shows for Michael Kidd. Her Broadway shows included Wildcat, in which she performed with Lucille Ball; Take Me Along with Jackie Gleason; and Subways Are For Sleeping. In-between she was cast in Destry Rides Again but got sick and had to leave during rehearsals. Her roommate Arlene Golonka introduced her to Second City improvisation theater and to improv performer Dick Schaal, whom Harper later married in 1965. Harper was stepmother to Schaal's daughter, actress Wendy Schaal. They lived in Greenwich Village at the corner of Perry Street and Bleecker Street.

Harper returned to Broadway in February 2010 starring as Tallulah Bankhead in Matthew Lombardo's Looped at the Lyceum Theatre.

She also appeared in a bit part in Li'l Abner (1959) when she was a teenager, playing one of the Yokumberry Tonic wives. She broke into television with an episode of the soap opera The Doctors, "Zip Guns can Kill" and was an extra in Love with the Proper Stranger. She toured with Second City with Schaal, Linda Lavin and others, and with Schaal and Skitch Henderson did a New York City talk show. She appeared in sketches on Playboy After Dark. Harper and Schaal moved to Los Angeles, California in 1968, and co-wrote an episode of Love, American Style.