This is a photo from the original Broadway production (which I, alas, never saw) of my favorite musical comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The gent at right is — of course — its star, Zero Mostel. The gent making faces at left is David Burns, who originated the role of Senex. Mr. Burns had just as glorious a career on the stage as Mostel or any actor you could name. One of his other triumphs came in 1964 when a show debuted called Hello, Dolly!, with Carol Channing as Dolly and Davy Burns as Horace Vandergelder. He was also the original Mayor Shinn in The Music Man and…well, he appeared in a lot of famous plays.
Though loved by the critics and adored by his fellow actors, Burns is not all that well known by the general public. He spent most of his career on the stage, not in front of cameras. A lot of what I know about him is because my pal Jim Brochu — the fellow I mention here often for his stunning one-man show as Zero Mostel — was his unofficial nephew. There was no blood relationship but they were that close. That's how come Jimmy got to hang around backstage at Forum and how he got to know the amazing Zero. Every time I'm with Jim and his "uncle's" name pops up, I hear a wonderful anecdote or two about the man.
The other morning in an e-mail from Jim, I learned something of vital importance. As a kid, I must have viewed the classic animated commercial for Maypo cereal no less than one billion times. Channel 5 locally seemed to have a rule that you couldn't run two consecutive cartoons without running the Maypo commercial between them. Ergo, I know this commercial better than I know anything I might have ever learned in school. What I didn't know was who did the voice of Uncle Ralph. Turns out, it was Uncle Davy!