"If ever I would leave you, it wouldn't be in autumn," sang
Robert Goulet, but in the end, that's just what he did.
The 73-year-old baritone best known for creating the role of Lancelot in the musical Camelot died in a Los Angeles hospital yesterday while awaiting a lung transplant. He had been diagnosed only last month with a rare form of pulmonary fibrosis.
Born Robert Gerard Goulet in Lawrence, Mass., on Nov. 26, 1933, he was the son of a Quebeçois father and an American mother.
In a 2005 interview with the Star, Goulet recalled singing in the church choir as a boy, "but I didn't think much of it. Then one night when I was 13, my father called me to his bedside and said `Robert, God gave you a voice. You must sing.' He died later that same night."
After his father's death, the Goulets moved to Alberta; by 16 he was performing with the Edmonton Symphony. He appeared in summer musicals and got a scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of Music in 1955. The same year, he married Louise Longmore. They had one daughter. By 1960, he was comfortably entrenched in the CBC-TV Sunday variety show Showtime.
After a week golfing in Bermuda, he returned to discover urgent messages from a U.S. agent he had never heard of, telling him Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe wanted him to audition for their new musical. His booming voice impressed everyone connected with the production (even though director Moss Hart later told him "You were so bow-legged we thought you were a cowboy"). He always remembered when he first heard what remained his trademark song, "If Ever I Would Leave You."
"It was the first day of rehearsals and I was too shy to go out with Richard (Burton), Julie (Andrews) and that crowd," Goulet said in 2005, "so I just got some soup from a deli and brought it back to the rehearsal hall. Fritz Loewe was sitting at the piano and he said `Dear boy, let me show you your song.'"
Goulet quickly learned the number and when he finished singing it, he looked up to find Burton staring at him open-mouthed. "The voice of an angel," he pronounced.
The world agreed.
Camelot opened on Broadway in December 1960 after a painful tryout at the O'Keefe Centre in Toronto, and Goulet was plunged into a world of stardom that he admitted he "probably wasn't prepared for."
He divorced his first wife in 1963 and married popular stage star Carol Lawrence. They stayed together for 18 tempestuous years, during which they had two sons.
Goulet won a Tony Award (for 1968's The Happy Time), became a sought-after Vegas headliner, but his personal life was falling apart. In addition to a growing problem with alcohol, his marriage to Lawrence had totally disintegrated.
Then in 1982, he met and wed Vera Novak, a Yugoslavian-born writer and artist, whom he credited with getting his life back in order.
Goulet was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1993, underwent surgery and then had radiation five years later when it recurred, but it left him philosophical about his own mortality.
"If I'm going to die, I'm going to die. I'm actually looking forward to it because I want to see what's around the corner. Maybe it's oblivion, but my Catholic upbringing tells me there's a life after for the soul. I'll say to God, `Give me a spot at the back of the hall and I'll spend eternity there.'"
Robert Goulet's Offical Website
To me his most memorable song, was If Ever I would Leave You. One of the supreme love songs of all time.
If Ever I Would leave You Full Version
If ever I would leave you
It wouldn't be in summer.
Seeing you in summer I never would go.
Your hair streaked with sun-light,
Your lips red as flame,
Your face witha lustre
that puts gold to shame!
But if I'd ever leave you,
It couldn't be in autumn.
How I'd leave in autumn I never will know.
I've seen how you sparkle
When fall nips the air.
I know you in autumn
And I must be there.
And could I leave you
running merrily through the snow?
Or on a wintry evening
when you catch the fire's glow?
If ever I would leave you,
How could it be in spring-time?
Knowing how in spring I'm bewitched by you so?
Oh, no! not in spring-time!
Summer, winter or fall!
No, never could I leave you at all!
Robert Goulet you will be sadly missed. If there's a choir in heaven, you are surely there.
A message from his wife, Vera.
Quote:
Los Angeles, CA
October 25, 2007
The family and I have been overwhelmed and deeply moved by the thousands of e-mails, letters and calls we have received offering support and prayers for my Robert.
I knew he was loved by many, but words cannot express the emotion in my heart and my soul hearing your voices, and reading the stories of how he has touched your lives. I feel so blessed to be married to this very special man.
In my life, more often than not I have traveled that dark winding road but the idea of quitting never even entered my mind. Over the years Robert would often say "you are a strong broad" and although the past 25 days have been the most difficult, dark days I have ever endured he knows that I will never, never give up on him. And I know he is putting up the fight of his life because he wants to live for me and for his children.
He cannot respond but I know he hears me. I talk to him and I read him your letters and I tell him how people across the world have reached out to touch him with love.
Your prayers have been a song of encouragement and a shining light giving me strength to help him pull through this veil of darkness.
From me and his children Nikki, Michael, Christopher our heartfelt "Thank You."
There is phrase in MacArthur Park, one of the many songs Robert has sung that simply states:
"There will be another
Song for me
And I will sing it"
I truly believe he will.
Vera Goulet
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Robert Goulet dies :(
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