Keith Prentice

Keith Prentice is probably best remembered for his role in Boys in the Band, a film whose title makes it sound like a musical, but in fact it was a dark, mostly negative portrayal of a group of gay men living in the 1960s, and it was anything but upbeat (and was not a musical at all). However, earlier in his career, the handsome actor built an impressive resume of musical roles. At age 18, Keith left his home state of Ohio for New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After six months there, he was signed to understudy the juvenile lead in the long-running Broadway hit The Sound of Music, featuring Mary Martin. After skipping through the Alps for a year and a half in that Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Prentice left to understudy the lead in Noel Coward's Sail Away. He played the role several times opposite Elaine Stritch. His other stage musical credits included the part of Julio in Lerner and Loew's Paint Your Wagon, and The King and I, with Farley Granger and Barbara Cook in Washington, D.C., as well as Henry Spoffard in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Chick Miller in Wish You Were Here, Neil in Fiorello! Hank in Wildcat, and Nestor in Irma La Douce. In 1968 he appeared off-Broadway in the non-musical The Boys in The Band, a controversial play featuring gay characters at a dramatic birthday party. Today, with gay-themed TV shows and movies like Will & Grace and Trick finding mainstream success,it may be difficult to imagine how ground-breaking Prentice's play was. After completing the movie version of Boys in the Band in 1970, he joined the cast of Dark Shadows, the super-successful supernatural TV soap opera. Like other cast members, he played more than one role, and both were rather dour. In 1983, Keith Prentice founded the Theatre Under the Stars in his hometown of Kettering, Ohio. He directed productions there for the next decade. He died in Kettering, of cancer and AIDS-related complications, on September 27, 1992.