Anyone skeptical about Charleroi Area High School's claim to Broadway and nightclub star Lisa Kirk as one of their own needn't look any further than the Charleroi Area Historical Society for validation.
"There she is, right next to William David Johns," Nikki Sheppick of the Historical Society said as she pointed to pictures on page 25 of the 1943 Cougar Memoir yearbook. "That's the year she graduated from Charleroi High School."
Sheppick, editor of the Historical Society's newsletter, also showed a visitor to the organization's headquarters at the John K. Tener Library a yearbook picture of Kirk with the Forensic Club. And she produced a thick folder of other information solidifying Kirk's ties to Charleroi, Roscoe and Brownsville.
"We get a lot of inquiries about Lisa," Sheppick said. "And it seems we're always discovering something new about her from time to time."
Jeannette Martino of Charleroi also has proof of Kirk's link to Charleroi High in the form of a 1954 picture taken by her late husband, Joseph Martino, whose excellent photography work chronicled the history of the community for many years. The photo shows Kirk enjoying a reunion in the school library with Edwin Luce, Stephen Stephanian, Lillian Colvin, Mary Bonner, William G. Mollenauer, Leslie Shriver, Ellen Clark, Frank Cantoni and Bill Hicks.
Interest in Kirk, whose given name was Elsie Marie Kirk, was rekindled recently by attention given to her on the Internet.
They include:
• Craig Zavetz showcases Kirk on his Web site, www.bigbandsandbignames.com, by noting that "she sang sort of with a Sophie Tucker-ish delivery ... more of a 'belter' ... her style seemed best suited for live performances, which is why she was in such demand on the NYC club scene." The site, which features in-depth information about myriad entertainers and popular nightclubs, also offers pictures of Kirk and a recording of one of her performances at the Plaza Hotel's Persian Room in New York City.
• Ira Gallen's nostalgia-filled site, www.tvdays.com, includes Kirk on a DVD titled "The Best of Oldsmobile (1956-58)." In offering a series of classic commercials for Oldsmobile Gallen notes that General Motors "added celebrities to help sell their cars with actresses Patricia Morison and Lisa Kirk, both of 'Kiss Me, Kate,' in the 1950s." A photograph of Kirk also appears on the site, which is filled with information, pictures and video clips of TV shows, films, cartoons, newsreels and commercials from the past.
• Triptych, a digital initiative of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore College libraries, features a photo of Kirk, John Battles and John Conte in the 1947 production of "Allegro" at the Majestic Theatre in New York City.
• Another site, www.wikipedia.org, emphasizes Kirk's work in the early days of television in such anthology series as Studio One, Kraft Television Theatre, The Colgate Comedy Hour and General Electric Theater and later as a guest star on "Bewitched" and "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" as well as such variety series as "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Hollywood Palace" and "The Dean Martin Show."
While those sites, and other sources, are informative regarding Kirk's long and successful career in show business, they contain some inaccuracies about other aspects of her life.
She was, for instance, born in Brownsville -- not Roscoe or Charleroi -- on Feb. 25, 1925. A story on page 1 of the April 10, 1956 edition of The Charleroi Mail pointed to that genesis this way:
"BROWNSVILLE, Pa. -- April 10 -- Local swains still are kicking themselves for letting pretty Lisa Kirk get away. The subject came up as news came that Lisa, Brownsville-born star of Broadway musicals, will appear in a story she wrote herself on television next Sunday (Front Row Center, CBS-TV on WSTV, Channel 9, Steubenville, 5 to 6 p.m.). The story, 'The Human Touch,' dramatizes, in part, the life of the writer. Her family moved from here to Roscoe, from where Lisa attended Charleroi High School."
According to records at the Charleroi Area Historical Society, Kirk's parents were George B. Kirk, a retail merchant in Brownsville, and Elsie M. Furlong Kirk. The family resided on Cadwallader Street in South Brownsville, but she and her mother later moved to Roscoe, where they lived with Lisa's grandfather.
Brownsville historian Glenn Tunney has noted in his weekly column in the Herald-Standard that Kirk's father also was an entertainer. He was part of a group known as the Kings of Minstrelsy which entertained in Brownsville in the 1920s. Kirk, "who owned a shoe store in the Neck," also was spotlighted as George B. Kirk and the Pennsylvania Radio Entertainers, billed as "the hottest jazz band in the state," Tunney wrote in a Dec. 3, 2000 column.
A week later, on Dec. 10, Tunney noted that Mary Anne Butler, a 1943 graduate of Brownsville High School graduate, recalled that Lisa "came by her great singing voice honestly ... her father was a featured singer in the minstrel shows."
"I remember her telling me that she was first smitten with show business when she was only 3, because her father took her on stage in the Brownsville minstrel shows," Butler told Tunney.
Kirk's mother Elsie also influenced her daughter's early passion for entertaining. She was a pianist who often worked with her husband in the minstrel shows and other performances.
According to numerous newspaper stories about Kirk's life, she was planning to enter Carnegie Tech to pursue studies for a career as an attorney when she began singing with Baron Elliott's band over radio station WCAE in Pittsburgh. As a result of this engagement, she did "a quick switch from technology to technique, a change that was warranted by her theatrical background," The Charleroi Mail reported on Feb. 14, 1944.
That story also called attention to Kirk being featured in a full-page photograph in the March issue of Esquire magazine as part of the publication's regular Stage Door series. "At present, Lisa is studying and receiving voice coaching lessons in New York City," The Mail said. "She will be remembered by local friends as Elsie Marie Kirk, having been given her present name by the Pittsburgh Playhouse."
Other stories in The Charleroi Mail focusing on Kirk included these:
• Jan. 29, 1946 -- Miss Kirk will be the featured soloist on the Radio Auction over station KQV Mutual tomorrow evening at 10 o'clock. The coast to coast hook-up will originate in New York City. The talented Roscoe girl has been kept busy in the East with radio, night club appearances and modeling. She was chosen as the January "Girl of the Month" by the makers of Camel cigarettes and her photo has appeared in many of the country's leading magazines.
• April 7, 1948 -- Miss Kirk made her first appearance in a Carnegie Hall concert March 27. She headlined a three-hour variety show with Jack Carter, Monica Moore, Morey Amsterdam and other stage and radio luminaries.
• April 13, 1949 -- Lisa Kirk, popular musical comedy star from Brownsville and Roscoe, will become the bride of Bob Wells, Hollywood and New York songwriter, within the next month. Miss Kirk is a hit in the current Broadway show "Kiss Me, Kate" with her rendition of "Always True to You in My Fashion" by Cole Porter.
• June 17, 1950 -- Lisa Kirk was hailed by Harold Cohen, Pittsburgh critic and theatrical columnist, for her achievement and rocketing ascent to fame. Cohen lauded Kirk as " ... an extraordinarily gifted singing comedienne ... has accumulated poise and personality and developed a style that is sleek and substantial."
• May 8, 1953 -- Cohen's comments also were featured in The Mail in his review of Kirk's first appearance at the Twin Coaches supper club in Rostraver Township. He wrote, "No doubt about it, Lisa Kirk has the smartest singing act at the Twin Coaches that's ever hit this town." Cohen, referring to the "tall, willowy, auburn-haired chanteuse," also emphasized that "her eye-filling wardrobe, designed by Pittsburgh's Burton Miller, is attracting as much attention as the star herself" and said her singing material, "arranged by her close friend and accompanist, Sid Bass, suits the throaty-voiced Miss Kirk perfectly."
Kirk made her Broadway debut in 1945 in "Good Night, Ladies." She also played bit parts in various Broadway stage productions and sang in numerous night spots along the Great White Way. Her first big break came in 1947 in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Allegro," in which she sang her famous number, "The Gentleman Is A Dope."
In 1948 Kirk was given a leading role in Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate," in which she starred for one and a half years.
She also recorded several albums of Broadway tunes and movie soundtracks. In the film "Mame" it was Kirk's rich, full bodied contralto voice that was dubbed for Rosalind Russell.
Describing her style in an Oct. 6, 1951 interview with United Press, Kirk said "a gal has to be a 'sextrovert' without being a 'sintrovert': to get ahead nowadays."
"A sextrovert is a girl who's sexy but not in a naughty way," she said. "I mean, she's not obvious about it. The minute you get obvious, you're being a sintrovert, and that isn't good." The latter, she explained, is a girl "who wears necklines down to her belt buckle and then wiggles around a lot." A sextrovert wears low necklines, too, "but she doesn't wiggle."
Kirk said she was using this technique at Ciro's in New York City, adding that "even the ladies like the act."
"That's important," she said. "The men may love you, but if their wives don't, they won't come back again. So I keep it lady-like. I sing one song that sort of puts 'em up on the edge of their seats, but I never quite shock 'em. I come close to it, sure. But I stay a sextrovert. I never cross that line that would make me a sintrovert."
Her style worked well, according to Associated Press writer Hugh A. Mulligan, who wrote on Nov. 25, 1956: "Her ability to capture an audience with her low, sexy voice, long auburn tresses and stunning figure sent her direct from a four-week sellout engagement at the Plaza's Persian Room to a four-week smash at the Waldorf, an unheard of double play in the entertainment world."
Mulligan also recalled Kirk's introduction to the New York scene in 1943, just before she was prepared to begin classes at Carnegie Tech.
"She never got there (college)," he wrote. "Vacationing in New York ... Lisa accompanied a friend to a night club chorus line tryout and wound up in the line."
"The back line at first," Kirk told Mulligan. "But I gradually progressed to a pivot job. Then one night at a party after the show I sang a couple of songs for the kids. The owner of the place heard me and offered me a spot singing with the band between shows."
That led to smaller parts in several musicals, more nightclub engagements and then her first big break in "Allegro." She was working at New York's famed Copacabana when she caught the ear and eye of Cole Porter, who signed her for the role of Bianca in "Kiss Me, Kate." Kirk and co-stars Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison and Harold Lang are featured in the original soundtrack of the musical on Columbia Records. The LP is one of several featuring Kirk available on www.amazon.com.
Kirk's career soared after that 1948 success and spanned more than 40 years on Broadway, in nightclubs and hotels across the country and on television. In 1974 she was featured in Jerry Herman's "Mack and Mabel," which starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. In 1984 she performed in a revival of Noel Coward's "Design for Living" in New York and in Cole Porter's "Nymph Errant" in London.
She also appeared in the original 1968 film production of Mel Brooks' hilarious classic "The Producers" starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. Kirk is credited as playing one of the rich elderly women wooed by Mostel's character, Max Bialystock. However, Lisa is listed by her real name, Elsie Kirk.
Kirk's mother Elsie also gained considerable attention for her work in television commercials for such clients as Kentucky Fried Chicken. Isabelle Hurley, longtime and women's editor at The Valley Independent, noted in a Jan. 1, 1973 column that the elder Kirk "is the peppy little old lady riding motorcycles in commercials ... very much in demand for commercials and other TV parts."
Mrs. Kirk was 85 when she died in New York City in July 1977.
Lisa died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City on Nov. 11, 1990. She was 65.
Her obituary in The Valley Independent emphasized that her mother and the late Bill Gass, theatrical agent, producer, writer and teacher and a native of Charleroi, were "very instrumental in promoting her career."
A lengthier obituary in The New York times on Nov. 13, 1990 recalled that Miss Kirk was injured in an automobile accident that threatened to end her career in the late 1960s. But she started "training like a fighter," Times reporter Eleanor Blau wrote. Blau continued:
"When she appeared in 1972 at the St. Regis Sheraton Hotel in New York City, John S. Wilson of The New York Times wrote that 'she is dancing and singing as though nothing had ever happened.' Inspired by Cole Porter, Miss Kirk said at the time: 'I kept thinking of Cole Porter, who had both legs crushed in a riding accident 10 years before he wrote 'Kiss Me, Kate.' It was seeing his determination to get better that made me work so hard.'"
Although she never smoked, Kirk's death was attributed to lung cancer. Many believed she was the victim of secondhand smoke from her many years of performing in nightclubs.
