This month, Great Performances returned with its fifth annual “Broadway’s Best” lineup, beginning on a “de-lovely” note with the celebrated West End revival of Cole Porter’s classic musical Anything Goes, starring Sutton Foster, reprising her Tony-winning performance as brassy, sassy evangelist-turned-nightclub singer Reno Sweeney. The Olivier Award-winning production, directed by Tony-winning choreographer Kathleen Marshall and featuring “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Anything Goes,” “You’re the Top,” and other Cole Porter favorites, is now streaming at pbs.org/broadwayonpbs and the PBS Video app.
Before you enjoy the beloved musical, check out this starry list of actresses who have played Reno Sweeney.
1) Ethel Merman
When talking about Reno Sweeney, all roads lead to The Merm – aka Ethel Merman – the brass-lunged diva who originated the role on Broadway in 1934. Celebrated for her brassy mezzo-soprano, impeccable pitch and diction, powerful belting, and larger-than-life personality, she was a darling of Broadway’s top songwriters, who wrote some of their best songs for her. Among the hits she introduced to Broadway audiences: “I Got Rhythm” from George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy, her Broadway debut; “You’re the Top” and “I Get a Kick Out of You” from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes; the beloved showbiz anthem “There’s No Business Like Show Business” from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun; and “Rose’s Turn” from Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy.
In addition to originating the role on Broadway, Merman portrayed Reno opposite Bing Crosby in the 1936 film version of Anything Goes. She reprised the role in a 1954 television adaptation, co-starring Frank Sinatra as the hero (renamed Harry Dane) and Bert Lahr as Moonface Martin, that was broadcast live as part of NBC’s popular musical variety series The Colgate Comedy Hour. The special, which condensed the musical to 53 zippy minutes, marked Merman and Sinatra’s television acting debuts. Watch the trailer.
Merman continued to set sail with Anything Goes well through the 1970s. Musical Comedy Tonight, a 1979 PBS special hosted and created by Sylvia Fine Kaye, paired her with dreamy Rock Hudson for “You’re the Top” and other hits from the show. And The Merm brought “I Get a Kick Out of You” to fabulously campy heights — perhaps unintentionally — with her 1979 album The Ethel Merman Disco Album. (No, seriously! Listen.)
2) Patti LuPone
Patti LuPone scored a Tony nomination and a Drama Desk Award for her dynamic portrayal of Reno Sweeney in Lincoln Center Theater’s acclaimed 1987 revival of Anything Goes, directed by Jerry Zaks (Hello, Dolly!, The Music Man, Mrs. Doubtfire). “With her burst of Lucille Ball red hair, a trumpet’s blare in her voice and lips so insinuatingly protruded they could make the Pledge of Allegiance sound lewd, Ms. LuPone’s Reno is a mature, uninhibited jazz dame: loose, trashy, funny, sexy,” The New York Times raved.
Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, where Anything Goes played, has a special place in LuPone’s heart – and not just because she wowed audiences as Reno there eight times a week and the show marked her first time gracing its glorious stage. On December 12, 1988, on a day off from the show, she married her husband Matthew Johnston onstage at the Beaumont. She talks about that magical day in Lincoln Center With Patti LuPone, the debut film in The WNET Group’s Treasures of New York series. Watch the complete episode.
Love Patti LuPone? We’ve got you covered! The two-time Tony winner, who is currently wowing audiences as Joanne in the hit Broadway revival of Company, is featured in Keeping Company with Sondheim (Friday, May 27th at 9 p.m; check local PBS listings), the final program in Great Performances’ “Broadway’s Best” 2022 line-up. The documentary also includes new interviews with Stephen Sondheim, director Marianne Elliott, Katrina Lenk, and members of the original 1970 cast.
VIDEO: Watch Patti LuPone and the cast of the 1987 Lincoln Center Theater production of Anything Goes perform the title song and some spectacular tap dancing on the 1988 Tony Awards.
3) Sutton Foster
“Sutton Foster doesn’t just deliver those Cole Porter hits, she knocks ’em out of the park,” Variety declared in its rave review of the 2011 Broadway revival of Anything Goes, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall and starring Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney. Foster picked up her second Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her bravura performance, so fans may be surprised to learn in her 2021 memoir Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life that in early rehearsals, she struggled to slip into Reno Sweeney’s bold, brassy, ultra-confident skin.
Foster found inspiration in former Reno Sweeney Patti LuPone, whom she has idolized since she was a teen and first saw the celebrated diva perform “Being Alive” from Company in the starry 1993 Great Performances special Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall. “I remember being 15 years old and watching that and being mesmerized by her talent and confidence,” Foster says in this this video interview, which also features director Kathleen Marshall talking about bringing the 2011 and 2021 productions of Anything Goes to Broadway and London, respectively.
Revisiting the role of Reno Sweeney a decade later in the 2021 revival at London’s Barbican Theatre – the production fans can enjoy on Great Performances “Broadway’s Best” – has been both fascinating and rewarding, Foster explains in this Shondaland interview.
Is Reno Sweeney in your DNA? Find out in our fun “Which Sutton Foster Character Are You?” quiz.
VIDEO: Watch Sutton Foster and Company perform the showstopping title number from Anything Goes on Great Performances here.
4) Ann Miller
A beloved and colorful star of movie musicals such as Easter Parade, On the Town, and Kiss Me, Kate, legendary hoofer Ann Miller was known for her witty, sassy persona, her firecracker tapping and ability to dance an astounding 500 taps per minute, and in later years, her supersized bouffant wigs. She also enjoyed a successful career on the stage, including a Tony-nominated turn in Sugar Babies with Mickey Rooney, and brought her trademark sass and star power to the role of Reno Sweeney in several productions of Anything Goes in the 1970s.
Her maiden voyage as Reno – a 1972 production of Anything Goes at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre in Missouri (The Muny) – began on a calamitous note when she was struck on the head by a sliding steel stage curtain on opening night, sustaining a concussion and loss of equilibrium that landed her in the hospital for 23 days. “It had a big nail in it, too. If I hadn’t had a wig on, it would have gone right into my brain,” she explained in this 1998 New York Times interview.
After wowing audiences as Reno at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse in 1974, Miller embarked on a summer stock tour of the production with stops including Playhouse on the Mall in Paramus, New Jersey (the first legitimate theater in a New Jersey shopping center); the Westchester Playhouse in Yonkers, New York; and the Miami Star Summer Theater in Florida. “Looking half her 50-plus years, Ann Miller has enough class, presence, and charisma to carry this show all by herself,” the Miami News gushed in its review of the Star Summer Theater production, adding that when Miller is off stage, “most of the show is spent waiting for her to return for her next number.”
The fast-tapping mega-star enjoyed another “Summer of Reno” in 1977, charming audiences at the Sikithville Theatre in New Jersey and American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, and in a Kenley Players production of Anything Goes that toured Ohio with Bobby Van as Billy Crocker. Director/choreographer Randy Skinner, Tony-nominated choreographer of the celebrated West End revival of 42nd Street that aired on Great Performances “Broadway’s Best” in 2019 (streaming via THIRTEEN Passport thru 10/31/22), was a dancer in the Kenley Players production and has fond memories of working with the larger-than-life Miller.
“Reno Sweeney wasn’t typically a big dancing role, but Ann Miller was a star dancer, so she was tapping up a storm in that show. She’d whip off her skirt, as she did so often in her movies, and launch into a fantastic tap number that was like something out of a big MGM musical — and audiences went wild!” Skinner said in a phone interview. “It was the experience of a lifetime. To work with a Hollywood legend I’d admired on the big screen and see her in top form and doing exactly what the audience came to see was incredibly inspiring for me as a young dancer.”
Paper Mill Playhouse’s 1974 Anything Goes program.
PHOTO: Ann Miller graces the cover of Paper Mill Playhouse’s 1974 Anything Goes program. Her bio inside declares, “Ann Miller is glamour and vitality personified whether working on film, TV, or in the theater,” adding that the legendary star — who was in her 50s at the time — “has no intention of being put out to pasture.”
VIDEO: Watch Ann Miller perform “Anything Goes” in a 1977 television appearance. (Courtesy of Alan Eichler via YouTube)
5) Leslie Uggams
Perhaps best known for her stirring portrayal of Kizzy in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots, Leslie Uggams has enjoyed an illustrious career spanning more than six decades on stage and screen. Her Broadway debut in the 1967 musical Hallelujah, Baby earned her a Tony Award and catapulted her to stardrom. Her other Broadway credits include Jerry’s Girls with Dorothy Loudon and Chita Rivera, a Tony-nominated performance in August Wilson’s King Hedley II starring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Viola Davis, On Golden Pond with James Earl Jones, and Thoroughly Modern Millie with Sutton Foster and Harriet Harris. The legendary actress, who was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2021, portrayed Reno Sweeney several times in the 1980s.
In early 1987, Uggams starred in an abbreviated 90-minute version of Anything Goes at the Claridge Hotel-Casino in Atlantic City. “Miss Uggams, who can be classy and brassy, looks smashing and her voice is in terrific estate,” The New York Times praised her performance.
With the success of Lincoln Center Theater’s Tony-winning 1987 revival of Anything Goes, a national tour launched in 1988 with Uggams as Reno, Rex Smith as Billy Crocker, and Rip Taylor as Moonface Martin. Uggams modeled her portayal of Reno on gospel singer Clara Ward. “She was a fantastic gospel singer, but she was known for being glamorous, as well, and playing Las Vegas. So whenever I think of Reno, that’s who I think of, because she made the transition from her gospel beginnings to the nightclub scene,” she said in this 1988 Washington Post interview.
Uggams lit up the stage as Reno again in 1989 when she replaced Patti LuPone in the Lincoln Center Theater revival. A NY Times article about replacement casts in A Chorus Line and other popular Broadway musicals toasted Uggam’s take on Reno. “The principal difference in Anything Goes is Leslie Uggams, succeeding Patti LuPone as Reno Sweeney and putting her own signature on this brassy role. Ms. Uggams is marked by her musicality, singing a passionate “I Get a Kick Out of You” and a jubilant “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” critic Mel Gussow wrote.
1988 Lincoln Center Theater flyer for “Anything Goes.”
PHOTO: A 1988 Lincoln Center Theater flyer introduces Leslie Uggams as their new Reno Sweeney.
