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This obituary was printed on May 12, 1964 in page 37, column 2 of "The New York Times". The article gave me an interesting insight into Carol's life.
Carol Haney, the energetic dancer who emerged from obscurity to stardom in "The Pajama Game" in 1954, died Sunday night in New York Hospital. She was 39 years old.
Miss Haney, who had been a choreographer in recent years, became ill at her home in Saddle River, NJ, on Tuesday night. She had just returned from London, where she staged the dance numbers for the musical "She Loves Me".
Wednesday morning, she was taken to Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ, and later that day she was transferred to New York Hospital. She was suffering from bronchiah pneumonia, complicated by a long history of diabetes.
Dr. Henry Siegel, assistant chief medical examiner, performed an autopsy because, he said, "it's unusual for someone to die of pneumonia at 39." Pending the completion of tests, he tentatively attributed Miss Haney's death to pneumonia.
Was Lead Dancer
Five feet, six inches tall, with a pixie face, a shaggy hairdo and a husky voice, Carol Haney worked in the wings for 15 years before she got her big chances in front of the footlights. When her moment came, she was equal to the occasion.
She had been cast as the lead dancer in "The Pajama Game". But George Abbott, the show's co-director, sensed in her a comic spirit and combined her role with another, giving her a speaking part for the first time in her career.
Miss Haney dazzled the critics and the public with two numbers- "Steam Heat" and "Her Is". She won a Tony award and was acclaimed as 1954's unknown-girl-makes-good-on-Broadway.
In a telephone interview from Boston yesterday, Mr. Abbott recalled taht Miss Haney had been besieged with offers for television appearances. She accepted many of them, he said, setting herself an almost impossible schedule of work.
"She missed a lot of performances," Mr. Abbott added. "She missed them because she was hurt. When dancers get tired, they hurt themselves, and she was simply exhausted."
Gwen Verdon, the dancer, said of Miss Haney:
"She was like a great, big, husky puppy dog that never knows when it's tired. She was so enthusiastic about everything that she never noticed the strain. When people asked her to slow down, she'd just bubble on about some new project."
Miss Haney, who was born in New Bedford, Mass., on Christmas Eve, began dancing at the age of 6. She opened "Miss Haney's School of the Dance" in her home town at 15, and left for Hollywood three years later.
She was in the chorus of an early Danny Kaye picture, danced in clubs with Jack Cole, and worked as an assistant choreographer with Gene Kelly. She once said she had danced miles as a stand-in for Vera-Ellen.
Miss Haney's sudden success in "the Pajama Game"- one admirer said she danced like a bowlegged gosling (ed: !?)- did not turn her head. "You work your head off for years," she remarked, "and then people say how lucky you are."
Worked on "Funny Girl"
After repeating her portrayal of Gladys in the movie version of "The Pajama Game", she helped stage "Flower Drum Song", the Perry como television show, "She Loves Me", "Bravo Giovanni", and "Funny Girl", the current Broadway hit musical.
In 1959, Miss Haney played a slatternly actress in William Inge's unsuccessful, non-musical play, "A Loss of Roses". The critics were unenthusiastic.
At 8:15 last night, in the cluttered backstage area at the Winter Garden, four men were standing around a lighting console, talking quietly.
Curtain time for "Funny Girl" was 20 minutes away. The stage was still dark, and although there was a good deal of activity, there was a noticeable lack of small talk.
"Carol didn't just do steps and routines," one of the men said. "She got involved, and that's why so many people liked- loved- her. That's why she got so tired."
Someone asked whether there would be an annoucement of Miss Haney's death before the curtain went up. Richard Evans, the shows' young, bearded production manager, looked at his shoe tops, then shook his head.
"I don't think so," he said. "There's nothing we can do for her except to do her steps, and that's what we ought to do. I know I'm right. We can't turn this into something terrible, something maudlin. I know I'm right."
The others seemed to agree. "When Oscar Hammerstein died," said Frank Goodman, the show's press agent, "I was working on 'Sound of Music'. We didn't do anything that night."
By then, it was 8:20, and Mr. Evans picked up the microphone connected to the backstage public-address system.
"Fifteen minutes," he said.
"There will be a memorial service for Carol on Wednesday. We all knew and loved her very much. The audience knew and loved her work very much, and we have got to do her work tonight, no matter how hard it is for us."
"So talented"
Upstairs, in the star's dressing room, Barbra Streisand was running her long fingers through her stringy hair. "Nobody even knew she was in the hospital," she said. "God, she was so talented and so gentle."
Buzz Miller, who was one of Miss Haney's partners in "Steam Heat", does a frentic first-act dance called "The Cornet Man" in "Funny Girl". He was sitting at his makeup table in a white tee-shirt, smoking a cigarette.
"You got used to the idea that nothing would ever destroy her," he said, "even though you watched her and saw her work and knew she was driving herself to death."
Miss Haney was married to Larry Blyden, the actor, in 1955, and they moved into a 254-year-old Dutch colonial house in Saddle River. They had two children- John (ed: it's actually josh!), 6, and Ellen, 3- before being divorced last year.
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The memorial service will be held at 11 AM tomorrow on the stage of the Winter Garden. Harold Prince, the producer, will deliver the eulogy. Burial will be at Marion, Mass., near New Bedford.