Greg In Hollywood on the Red Carpet:”A Chorus Line” opening at Pantages in Hollywood was star-studded

BROADWAY CLASSIC: Enjoyed the heck out of the new production of A Chorus Line that opened at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood this week.

It’s a wonderfully performed show with a top-flight cast who sing and dance to perfection. It was a wonderful to see all the great numbers including my favorite What I Did For Love. Of course, there is I Hope I Get It and One and all the great material contained in this show about an audition for a Broadway show.

I would be remiss if I also failed to mention that Derek Hanson who plays director Zach in the show, is breathtakingly beautiful as well as very talented as a singer and dancer. And girls and gay boys, the body is hot! Hot! Hot!

It runs for two weeks only so if you want to go, get on it because it closes at The Pantages on June 13!

Among the stars who turned out for opening night including Oscar winner Shirley Jones, Tony winner John Lloyd Young, Grammy winner Melissa Manchester, Emmy winner Camryn Manheim, Olympic champion Greg Louganis, director and choreographer Kenny Ortega, actors Michael Gross, Paul McGill, Josh Sussman, Hal B. Klein, Michael Papajohn, actresses JoAnne Worley, Anne Jeffreys., Charlene Tilton, Jackie Zeman, Kate Linder and Dancing With the Stars pro Kym Johnson.

I was there to talk to with as many of them as I could. Here are some highlights:

Shirley Jones attended with husband Marty Engels and told me: “I was at the opening of the original A Chorus Line in New York.”

While she made her big splash as the leading lady in classic movie musicals such as Oklahoma! The Music Man and Carousel and won an Oscar for dramatic work in Elmer Gantry (there’s the Mrs. Partridge thing too, okay?), Miss Jones has spent a lot of time doing theater: “I did four Broadway shows before I came to Hollywood.”

She and son Patrick Cassidy also appeared together on Broadway in 42nd Street, the first time a mother and son ever appeared together in a Broadway musical.

“I was scared to death because I’m an old lady now and it wasn’t easy. But after about a month I was okay. And a wonderful thing about appearing on Broadway that I remembered right away was camaraderie people have about doing a show together. You just don’t quite get that in movies and television. You get a wonderful script, a wonderful story and a wonderful acting role but you don’t get the camaraderie that makes a show a show.”

Melissa Manchester is one of my all-time favorite singers. Could listen to her music all day. She won the Grammy for You Should Hear How She Talks About You and had huge hits with Don’t Cry Out Loud and Midnight Blue. But tops on my list is her ballad Come In From the Rain. One of the most gorgeous songs – ever!

Melissa’s most recent album is When I Look Down that Road. She says: “I’m on the road and writing and life is good.”

It was a thrill last month to watch Melissa perform at Cast Party, an event that takes place every month or so at The Magic Castle in Hollywood where performers drop in, unannounced, to do a number. I found myself at the table next to Melissa’s and she exuded such joy both while performing and while watching others sing.

“I was very happy,” she said of that night. I love the idea of it. It’s mostly what happens in my living room on Christmas. The fact that this has gone on for years and years and years is thrilling. I’ll be at the next one.”

JoAnne Worley is such a great star who really knows how to razzle dazzle. Such a talent and a blast on a red carpet. Although most famous for Laugh-In, Jo Anne has spent much of her career in the theater including a run at The Pantages a few years back in Wicked as Madame Morrible. She’s a big theater fan and said of A Chorus Line: “It’s such an emotional, fabulous show and it speaks certainly to performers. Of course it’s about life, but it really speaks to performers.”

Kenny Ortega, the director of the High School Musical franchise and who choreographed Dirty Dancing, was excited to watch the latest production of A Chorus Line: “I’ve been fortunate enough to be at a few of the Chorus Line openings including the original more than 30 years ago. I would not miss it. It’s just so fresh, such a genius idea at its core. Just the whole way that it came together. It still stands up conceptually as one of the bravest and smartest ideas ever.”

Next up for Kenny: “We’re in development with Universal Motion Pictures for the film version of In the Heights. I’m really excited about that.”

Actress Kate Linder, longtime cast member on The Young and the Restless, always adds lots of glamour to any event she attends. I snapped her with Charlene Tilton of Dallas fame. She was ready for a good show: “I’ve seen A Chorus Line I can’t even count how many times. I saw it on Broadway when Donna Mckechnie was in it. Meanwhile, Charlene tells me she has the rights to the life story of the late Tammy Faye Mesner and hopes to be before cameras in a movie about Tammy Faye later this year!

Olympic great Greg Louganis is a huge theater fan and an accomplished stage performer in his own right. We had a great chat which you can read HERE.

Jackie Zeman has played the role of Bobbi Spencer on General Hospital for more than 30 years. But she’s not on the front-burner like she once was, at least for now: “I’m recurring but not much, it’s just here and there. So I’ve been keeping busy, doing some designing with my jewelry, I’m traveling to Africa on behalf of the Gabriel Project in a couple of weeks – we bring over kids to the US for life-saving heart surgery. Plus I’m a mom and I have two teenaged daughters so I try to be a good example to them.”

No matter what she’s doing, Jackie is always recognized by her fans: “There’s such a connection with the fans after being on television for so long in a role that has such a connection. Some of the fans are like family to me and I am to them.”

We had such a good chat that I didn’t want it to end but the curtain was about to go up and we had to find our seats. And whaddaya know, we ended up with seat RIGHT NEXT to each other! It was fun to enjoy the show with an actress who I great admire.

Broadway star John Lloyd Young (pictured with Glee cast member John Sussman) has a strong connection to A Chorus Line: “This was one of the first Broadway shows I ever saw, I saw it in 1986, I was just a little kid. I was old enough to wait outside the stage door for autographs, I was fascinated by the show, I was so excited with the actors and I had no idea at that point that I’d be a Broadway actor myself.”

John, who starred in the indie comedy Oy Vey! My Son is Gay last year, won the Tony Award for Jersey Boys and I wondered what that accolade has meant to him: “Winning the Tony is sort of when I got my equity card when I was a really young actor. It’s a legitimizer, you’re a member of a club and you’ll always be  a member of it.”

He added: “But whether I won a Tony or not, Jersey Boys would have been a great legitimizer for any actor. It feels like a benchmark, they’ll never take it away and I’m very proud of it but what’s interesting about it is that it just means you were just good at that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at the next thing. So you still have to work just as hard as if you are a struggling actor just starting out.”

Since he’s living in LA now, John said he’s love to do Jersey Boys again someplace like, say, The Pantages!

“There’s a market for it out here and I live here and I told them I’d like to do it so we’ll see if it happens.”

Broadway and film actor Paul McGill came to the show as an audience member but he very well could have been up there on the stage. Paul appeared in the most recent Broadway revival of the show for two-and-a-half years in the role of Mark and will return to Broadway Aug. 1 in Memphis.

“It’s going to be good to just sit back and have nostalgia and just remember all my firends and the good times that I had,” he said. “It was the time of my life. I did it from the ages of 18-21.

After Chorus Line closed back East, Paul headed to L.A. and got cast in last year’s feature film remake of Fame and also has a role in the upcoming film House Hunting.

He has found comfort in having a growing number of Broadway performers out here too: “It’s a tightly knit community. LA is such as film and television-based town. Everyone who has done Broadway and come to LA, we kind of congregate and we get along really well. It’s nice to have the Broadway community here.”

Things had gotten quite chaotic on the red carpet by the time Michael Gross and his wife made their way down so I did not get the chance to chat with the former star of Family Ties. But I did snap a quick photo!

Dancing With the Stars pro Kym Johnson was so happy to have won the crown with Donny Osmond last fall that she took the spring season off from the show and worked as a correspondent for E! News:”I wanted to do something else … I’ll probably go back next season.”

I wondered what it was like to have spent so much time with Donny who has been a star for 40-plus years: “I love Donny Osmond, he’s the hardest working man in showbiz. I was in Vegas with him a lot and the fans, I’d never seen anything like it. He’s the nicest man.”

Devon Werkheiser, star of the Ned’s Declassified franchise on Nickelodeon. I had no time to chat but I’m glad I snapped a pic of the kid!

HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS: This handsome man is not a movie star! He’s my friend Trevor Daley and he was my guest at the opening. It’s always so much fun to go to the theater with Trevor who works for Sen. Dianne Feinstein.