- Kenneth Nelson
Infobox actor
caption =
birthdate = birth date|1930|3|24
birthplace =Rocky Mount, North Carolina ,United States
deathdate = Death date and age|1993|10|7|1930|3|24
deathplace =London, England Kenneth Nelson (
March 24 ,1930 –October 7 ,1993 ) was an Americanactor .Born in
Rocky Mount, North Carolina , Nelson appeared in several television series in the late 1940s, "Captain Video and His Video Rangers " and "The Aldrich Family " among them. He was cast in his first Broadway show, "Seventeen (musical)|Seventeen", a musical adaptation of theBooth Tarkington novel that opened at theBroadhurst Theatre onJune 21 ,1951 and ran 182 performances.Unfortunately, he found little work for the remainder of the decade, but his patience paid off when in 1960 he was cast in a little
off-Broadway show entitled "The Fantasticks " which, at 17,162 performances, eventually became the world's longest-running musical. Good notices eventually opened other doors, and in 1962 he was hired to understudyAnthony Newley in "Stop the World - I Want to Get Off " when it transferred from the West End, eventually assuming the lead role when the star departed the show. From there he went to another London import, "Half a Sixpence ", in 1965.In 1968, he accepted the lead in the controversial and groundbreaking off-Broadway production of "The Boys in the Band", the first play to explore the milieu of
gay life inNew York City in a graphically frank manner. He, together with the rest of the cast, went on to appear in the 1970 film version directed byWilliam Friedkin .1970 also saw him return to Broadway in the lead role in "
Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen ", a musical adaptation of "The Teahouse of the August Moon". It was a critical and commercial disaster, closing after only 19 performances.The rest of his career was spent playing small roles on television and in movies of little distinction. He eventually moved to England, later explaining, "I moved to England to escape theatrical
stereotypes . Personally, I've enjoyed the change. It's a cultural thing. Here, people don't thinkRimbaud is aSylvester Stallone character, or thatmatricide is when you kill yourself in bed ... and I got tired of a culture where aJohn Travolta can be considered a real actor, never mind some kind of a ...sex symbol ! England to me is more real." [imdb name|0625522]Nelson died in 1993 of
AIDS -related complications inLondon ,England .References
External links
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Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
