Musical

Notable Alumni Jamie Donnelly MLHS ‘64

Although it’s only February, it doesn’t mean we aren’t looking forward to Spring and the MLHS Spring Musical! Danny, Sandy, Rizzo, Kenickie - T-Birds & Pink Ladies all under one roof at Rydell High. Grease is the classic musical about teens in love in the 1950s.

The Work Begins Now! April 23 seems like a long way off, but the hard work begins now with the cast and crew of Grease.

Almost all of us have seen the classic 1978 movie “Grease”, and many of us are at least familiar with the cult-favorite “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, which played on stage both in Los Angeles and New York. Both “Grease” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” have become indelible icons of American pop culture and history, and both featured roles played by Mountain Lakes Class of 1964 alumna Jamie Donnelly.

From her IMDb biography: “You know Jamie Donnelly from her double-wide smile and champagne personality. A veteran actress of stage, television, and movies, Jamie is a bonafide cult figure for not one but two major 20th century cultural events: The original “Rocky Horror Show”, both at the Roxy in Los Angeles and on Broadway with Tim Curry, in which she coined the roles of Trixie and Magenta, and “Grease” on Broadway and in the movie with John and Olivia in which she played Jan, the “brusha brusha” Pink Lady.

After growing up in New Jersey where she could see the glittering skyline of New York City across the river, Jamie did a couple dozen

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summer stock musicals before she landed on Broadway at the age of seventeen in Kander and Ebb’s, “Flora, The Red Menace”.

She both understudied Liza Minelli’s Tony award winning title role and originated the character of Lulu. A darling of the New York theatre crowd, she continued starring in a succession of Broadway musicals such as “George M” at the Palace opposite Joel Grey. One of her favorite memories is having been taught “Falling in Love with Love” by Richard Rodgers which she sang at the Helen Hayes Theatre in “Rodgers and Hart.”

Jamie also worked off-Broadway in the original company of “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown”, in regional theatre for “Hot L Baltimore”, overseen by the playwright, Lanford Wilson, in soap opera for a recurring role as Dusty Maguire on “The Guiding Light,”guest starring on television series “Policewoman” and “Barnaby Jones”, and television movies as a country western star with James Franciscus, “The Dream Makers.”

In the late 1960s or early 1970s I was astonished to learn that a boy from town, one of my younger sister’s classmates, who lived on North Crane Road, had been on television, and that I had actually seen one of his commercials (for cough medicine). I am not surprised to now learn that Jamie is his older sister. Though she now lives in California, I hope she will always think of Mountain Lakes as home.

Jamie appeared on both the LA and Broadway productions of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Jamie played “Jan” in the movie version of “Grease.”

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