Review/reminiscence from a blog.

Nobody Does It Like Her

In September 1960, a revue called "Vintage '60" that had started in California, traveled to Broadway. Four days later it closed, but never mind. In the cast were two effervescent soubrettes, Bonnie Scott and Michele Lee. Within months, Scott opened as Robert Morses's leading lady in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and Lee was tapped at 18 to be Cesare Siepi's leading lady in the short-lived "Bravo, Giovanni." Then when Scott, who'd received terrific reviews for her performance, left 'How to Succeed..." more quickly that B'way wags would have predicted, Lee was asked to replace her, did and played the role for two years.

Not much has been heard from Scott since, but Lee -- who rarely mentions she didn't open "How to Succeed..." when she plugs herself in it -- has parlayed her precocious early assignments into genuine longevity. Now performing an act of unflagging bravado at appealing Feinstein's at the Regency, she gives the impression of having achieved her tenure -- the couple of films (the first "Love Bug"), "Knot's Landing," other television production deals -- by sheer force of will.

Oh, she's talented, all right. She has a strong belt, is still cute as a button now that she's in her sixties and behaves like the senior class's Girl Most Likely. But the belt and that reveille personality seem to be coming from deep, deep, fathoms deep inside her where the other stick-to-it-iveness resources emanate. Likely they were inculcated by her father, Jack Dusick, a Hollywood make-up man whose practical and fantastical philosophies she quotes repeatedly.

By the time, she's finishes her energetic, not to say restless, turn -- in which she gets personal for seemingly the same reasons stars expose themselves for People magazine cover stories, she wins the audience over. Yes, there's that audition-winning voice. It's an oddity, however, because the powerhouse notes are still there, but when she pulls back the sound is tattered. (The pipes are rather like the artfully ripped and stringy tops with glitter she's taken to wearing.) Lee doesn't back off from singing numbers she introduced on the Great White Way, including the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields "Nobody Does It Like Me," that insistent self-pity anthem from "Seesaw." It's the one about habitually screwing things up with which Gittel Mosca flagellates herself. The truth is that Lee has seen to it she mucks up nothing in her path -- probably not even her ex-marriage to James Farentino. You can't help but admiring her for it.

-- David Finkle


November 21, 2005