- published: 26 Jan 2013
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George Hearn (born June 18, 1934) is an American actor and singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Hearn studied philosophy at Southwestern at Memphis, now Rhodes College before he embarked on a career in the theater, training for the stage with actress turned acting coach Irene Dailey. Most of Hearn's early performances were in traditional productions at the New York Shakespeare Festival and theaters at Lincoln Center.
Hearn's career began in 1963 when he played Sir Dinidan in a national tour of Camelot with Biff McGuire and Jeannie Carson, standing by for McGuire, who played King Arthur. He first garnered a notice as John Dickinson in the acclaimed 1969 musical 1776 and as Liv Ullmann's leading man in the musical version of I Remember Mama (1979).
On March 4, 1980 he replaced Len Cariou in the title role of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd opposite Dorothy Loudon. Later in 1980 Hearn and the show's original star, Angela Lansbury, headed the show's touring company, then reprised their roles for a Showtime production of the musical, which won him an Emmy Award for his portrayal.
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the protagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–47).
The tale became a staple of Victorian melodrama and London urban legend, and has been retold many times since, most notably in the Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.
Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although possible legendary prototypes exist.
In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever as they sit in his barber chair. His victims fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. In case they are alive, Todd goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting his customers' throats before dispatching them into the basement through the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.
A tale of 2 acts
One in 1948
One in 62
There’s no justice in trade and industry
Full of promise in integration
Dissolves
Precipitates resentment
When the books that carry
Were built by decorated arms
In rain sodden yards
Then the gulf appears wider
Two islands colliding
When the books that carry
Were built by decorated arms
In rain sodden yards
The past gets coloured in
I find it frightening
When the books that carry
Were built by decorated arms
In rain sodden yards