The Gentlemen of the Follies!
At age 18 Dick France
Three decades of teaching dance didn't dim Dick France's urge to go out there and do it himself one more time! At 81, he is in his ninth season with the Follies after running the France Academy of Dance with his wife Karrie, in Tucson, Arizona, since 1970.
Before that, Dick, the son of vaudevillians "Jerome and France" and raised in Chicago, had a distinguished career that began in 1948 with the touring company of Annie Get Your Gun, starring Mary Martin.
He went on to roles on Broadway in Seventeen, Wish You Here, By the Beautiful Sea (with Shirley Booth), The Girls Against the Boys (with Dick Van Dyke) and Pal Joey. He also performed for President Lyndon Johnson in Oklahoma! at the White House. On TV, Dick made numerous appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Taking his talents abroad, he restaged Wish You Were Here in London, played the lead in Pal Joey and appeared in Noel Coward's Night of 100 Stars. Back on Broadway, he was Steve Lawrence's standby in What Makes Sammy Run and filled in the title role some 30 times.
Dick and Karrie now reside in Palm Springs, where she is a choreographer. During the summer, they reside in Tucson.
What is your favorite Follies memory? "One day my knee hurt so I took a bag of frozen blueberries from the dressing room refrigerator to ice it. When I was done, I gave the bag to a dresser who went home and made blueberry muffins. The next day, Mr. Markowitz asked, ‘WHERE are my blueberries???' Sheepishly, the dresser handed him a muffin with her apologies. We all had a good laugh."
MORE FUN FACTS:
- It runs in the family: his son, Sean France, is associate director of the Missouri Contemporary Dance Company and lives in the university town of Columbia with his wife, Erin.
- When Dick replaced Steve Lawrence on Broadway, he had to learn the second act of What Makes Sammy Run with just one night's rehearsal.
- The challenge of his life was regaining strength after open-heart surgery in 2004: "I kept thinking, I want to re-audition for the Follies. I did that the next year and made it back in the show."
- He was inspired to join the Follies because "I wanted to be in a great production that would equal the same quality and experience I had on Broadway. The Follies is the only show that has that."
- "I am younger than my years," he says, "because I think young. Having a wife 26 years younger helps, too."
