JoAnne Worley is a life force who tells a great story, sings a good tune and makes you laugh out loud

“I love to make you laugh, I love to make people laugh,” she said at the top of the show. “I really remember the very first laugh I got in public. It was in church and I was about five … I remember singing Silent Night and I really let it out (she had her big voice even then) and from then on, I never sang again, I just mouthed the words. I didn’t want to get hollered at. But I had a lot of time to look at the people in the audience and I’d take the gum out of my mouth and do things with it and the people would laugh and it felt so good.”

Miss Worley segued from anecdote to song effortlessly, interacted with the audience very naturally and was quick with a quip or her trademark operatic trill during any unexpected lulls in the proceedings.

Her stories were hilarious, especially the one about her first big show, Billy Barnes People, in which she had all kinds of wardrobe problems including one night when her skirt fell to the floor during the bows and the persistent problem of the rhinestones from her black outfit continually falling off.

“The stage manager finally had to teach me a lesson and he took everyone into the green room and he ripped me of my rhinestones like a soldier getting his stripes ripped off his uniform and he said: “For two months JoAnne, you’re going to do the show without rhinestones.” I think that’s why even now I play to the back row because I’m searchng for those missing rhinestones. I overcompensate!”

The show included various photos and clips including a very funny sequence with she and Ruth Buzzi trying – unsuccessfully – to get through a Laugh-In sketch about bad breath.

Miss Worley provided the audience with an update on the Laugh-In cast: “Let’s see, let’s start with Judy Carne. She’s over in England someplace, she doesn’t know where. … And, or course, Lily Tomlin is a big ol’ movie star and television  star … Gary Owens is here tonight! … Ruth Buzzi lives in Texas now and I just talked to her the other day … I don’t know what’s happened to Goldie Hawn. Oh, I know, that’s right, she’s a big ol’ movie star and she’s raising movie stars – that’s her profession now – bringing up movie stars as far as the eye can see.”

We all know how funny JoAnne can be but this show gave us who hadn’t seen her on stage before just what a fine musical theater actress is. She closed the show with Rose’s Turn from Gypsy that was as good a version as I’ve ever seen.

JoAnne (that’s me pictured with her, above) is still going strong appearing on Broadway in The Drowsy Chaperone and in Wicked during seven months of its run at The Pantages Theatre.

She’s played so many of the great stage roles in theaters across the country including Mama Rose in Gypsy and the leads in Hello Dolly! Anything Goes, Annie Get Your Gun, Once Upon a Mattress and many more.

Among the celebs who turned out for the second night of Miss Worley’s two-day run were Tony winner Alan Cumming, her Laugh-In co-star Gary Owens, actor Christian Campbell, and actresses Loretta Swit,  Romi Dame, Jane Kean, Kate Linder, Zelda Rubenstein and Jackie Joseph.”It was great, I loved it,” Cumming told me at the after-party. “I didn’t know Laugh-In and everything so for me it was so much of an education. It was hilarious. My new favorite line is “The costume was basic black with rhinestones.”

Campbell said of Miss Worley: “She’s brilliant, brilliant. Old school talent and entertainment.”