On April 27, 1977--exactly 46 years ago today-- I got a call from my friend Charlie. He was about to

head out to Louisville’s Freedom Hall where he was going to camp out overnight in what he figured

would be a very long line in order to get a ticket to an upcoming concert when the box-office opened the

next morning.  The concert would be performed by Elvis Presley, and Charlie was a big, big Elvis fan.

He was calling to ask if he should get a ticket for me.

I wasn’t the uber-fan that Charlie was, but I did love Elvis. Who didn’t love Elvis? I asked Charlie

what the ticket would cost. My memory has always told me that the price was $8, but a little research

shows me that the actual ticket prices were $10, $12, and, for Texas oilmen, $15. I know those prices

sound absurdly, even comically low, but it was 1977 after all.

Charlie was hanging on the phone waiting for my response as my mind batted it back and forth.

On the sunny side of the net, it was Elvis. A chance to see the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll live and in person.

Hard to top that. On the shadowed side, I was, as usual, flat broke. $10 might not seem like much now

and, in truth, it wasn’t exactly a fortune in ‘77, but it was big bucks to me. I was between gigs, owed

money to my girlfriend….not good. 

I wanted to go, believe me, I did. But I just couldn’t justify in my mind laying out that ten-spot.

Especially since I’d probably have to borrow it from Debby. Sometimes poverty could be really cruel. 

But I had to give Charlie an answer. So I told him, “no…no, I can’t afford it. I hate to miss it but…

oh, I’ll catch him next time.”  And that was that. 

Of course, there would be no next time. On May 21, 1977, Elvis played his second and final

Louisville engagement.(To put it in temporal context, four days later, STAR WARS premiered.) And

shortly after that I got a job and likely could have managed ten bucks but too late.

Less than three months later, Elvis was gone at 42 years of age. Charlie got to see Elvis, but now

he’s gone too. I’m still here, at least the husk of me, still wishing I’d seen The King …Debby would

have loaned me ten bucks. I was an idiot. Still am, for that matter.

A while back I was flipping through a slew of YouTube videos, ‘cause I don’t know no better, and I found myself watching the cast of LES MISERABLES performing “One Day More” on the Tony Awards show back in 198-something. And there, getting his moment on camera, was Leo Burmester as Thénardier. I smiled when I spotted him.

        I don’t think of Leo that often, but over the last 40+ years, whenever he has entered my view or crossed my mind, it was always as “Leo, the guy who had my career.’
He didn’t really, but sorta. But not really. Just sorta. It went like this.

In 1975 I got a phone call from the producer at a local (Louisville area) dinner theater. I had worked at this theater less than a year earlier, so we knew each other. He wondered if I’d be interested in coming in to audition for the role of “Dolan” in his upcoming production of MISTER ROBERTS. Why, of course I would! So we arranged that I would meet him at the theater in just a couple of hours.
      I arrived in good time, met the producer, and read a scene. He said, “good, good, that’s fine.” Then he drew a breath and said, “this is a weird situation.” 
Turns out that he’d staged MISTER ROBERTS at another of his theaters just a few months earlier and he wanted to re-use a bunch of actors from that production. One of those actors was the guy who’d played Dolan. That being Leo Burmester.
He’d been trying to get in touch with Leo for a long time -- I think maybe he said for “a few weeks” -- but, despite leaving multiple messages with his service (ah, the olden days), Leo hadn’t called back. Earlier that very day the producer had called Leo one last time. He left a message saying that time was too short, he had to fill the role, so if Leo didn’t get back to him by 5 pm, he’d cast somebody else.
The producer told me this story in an apologetic tone. He said that the role was mine unless Leo got back to him by five o’clock. He was sorry to be so indefinite, but he needed to cast the role, he’d given Leo that ultimatum, so…
I told him I understood, no problem, and I left, driving directly home. As soon as I walked through the door, the phone rang. Of course it did. Leo had just called back and accepted the role. The producer apologized again and said--as all producers do-- “I’ll find something for you in the future.”  To his credit, he did. I did four more shows for him over the next couple of years.

That’s just the beginning of the story --and my only real part in the story. Leo did the run of MISTER ROBERTS, then later, he played a major role in the premiere production of Marsha Norman’s GETTING OUT at Actors Theater of Louisville. Probably no connection really, but I always associated Leo’s MISTER ROBERTS gig with him being hired at Actors Theater. In other words…maybe that could have been me.
The play got great reviews, as did Leo, and it moved to Off-Broadway where, again, great reviews and awards.

From there it was onward and upward for Leo. He replaced John Goodman as Pap Finn in BIG RIVER on Broadway. He originated Broadway roles in LES MIS, BURIED CHILD, THE CIVIL WAR and others. He also appeared in a bunch of movies and TV shows, where I would regularly spot him. Most of his film work was in pretty small roles. And, small or large, he did get to work with Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, William Friedkin, Sidney Lumet, and Clint Eastwood.

        Of course, there’s no real career theft here unless you count him taking the MISTER ROBERTS job from me. His role in GETTING OUT was not something which I’d have done well, and it was that which led to everything else for Leo. So, no, it wasn’t that Leo had my career, more that I could watch him work and pretend that “I could have done that.” I never ground my teeth because he got roles that I didn’t. Matter of fact, I smiled when I saw him. He felt like a connection to my own past. A guy who’d made good.

        I only met Leo a few times, way back in those Aulden Dayes, and our meetings were merely of the “hey, nice to see you…hey, how are you?” sort of thing.

Leo died in 2007 of, apparently, a tick bite. One of Nature’s more lousy jokes.