Pamela Blair, known for her roles in A Chorus Line and All My Children, passed away on Sunday (July 23) after struggling with an illness, per Deadline. Blair was 73, and died in her home in Phoenix, Arizona.
Blair first played “Val” in the Tony-award-winning musical A Chorus Line on Broadway at the Schubert Theater on July 25, 1975. Her character and iconic musical number “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” painted a picture of how ruthless the theater industry is, as the song’s title referred to the scores that Val had received at an audition for her dancing skills and her appearance.
The song highlighted her decision to “call the doctor for [her] appointment to buy tits and ass,” which by the end of the song, Val exclaims “have changed [her] life!”
It turns out that the character of Val was “loosely based on her own life,” according to the official Twitter page of the show’s late composer and EGOT winner, Marvin Hamlisch.
His Twitter honored Blair with the following message on Monday (July 24): “We are saddened to hear that Pamela Blair, the original “Val” in A Chorus Line, has passed away. The character was loosely based on her own life, and she was a part of the musical from the very first workshop.Our thoughts are with her loved ones and fans.”
Prior to playing Val, Blair’s appeared on Broadway in Promises, Promises, Wild and Wonderful, Sugar and Seesaw, and Of Mice and Men, where she played “Curly’s Wife” alongside James Earl Jones‘ Lennie.
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Blair appeared on various TV programs, as well, including Ryan’s Hope and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She also played guest roles on All My Children, for which she received a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1987.
Blair also appeared in films like Annie (1982), Mighty Aphrodite (1985), and 21 Grams (2003).
Her A Chorus Line co-star Baayork Lee, whom the show’s Connie Wong was largely based on, honored Blair on her Facebook on Monday.
“I am very sad to say my Sagittarian sister Pam Blair has gone to play with her [A Chorus Line] collegues among the clouds,” she wrote, adding that she and Blair shared the same birthday.
“We always wrote to one another no matter where we were on that day,” she continued. “What a colorful character she was as depicted in the Val monologue in the show.”
Lee shared that Blair “brought the house down every night as well as a woman standing at the edge of the orchestra shouting, ‘Wash your mouth out.’”
“You are free now Pammie so dance, dance, dance amoung the stars,” she wrote.
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