Susan Watson

Susan Watson (born December 17, 1938) is an American actress and singer best known for her roles in musical theatre.

Watson's first professional role was Velma in the original West End production of West Side Story in 1958. She created the role of Luisa in The Fantasticks and then played Kim on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie, beginning in 1960. Among many other roles in musicals, she was nominated for a Tony Award for the role of Jenny in A Joyful Noise (1966). She starred in the title role of the Broadway revival of No, No Nanette in 1971. Watson also appeared in several television series and specials. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Watson was one of five children of a geologist/geophysicist and a dance instructor. From an early age, her life was filled with the music of Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein. As a teenager, she performed in summer stock before being accepted at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.

Her studies there were interrupted when she accepted a role as Velma and understudy for Maria in the original West End production of West Side Story in 1958.

Stopping in Paris after the show's run, Watson met her sister, Janet, who was dating Tom Jones and urged Watson to contact him when she arrived in New YorCity. Jones and Harvey Schmidt cast her in thek lead role of Louisa, "The Girl", in their one-act musical The Fantasticks, which ran for one week in 1959, at Barnard College's Minor Latham Playhouse, while the creative team tried to raise financing for an off-Broadway production.

Watson appeared in a revue entitled Follies of 1910. Gower Champion, who was in the process of casting Bye Bye Birdie, noticed Watson in Follies and offered her a role. She played the role of Kim throughout the entire Broadway run (April 1960 – October 1961). She finally returned to The Fantasticks when it was televised by the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1964.

Following a national tour of Carnival, Watson returned to New York to play opposite Robert Preston in Ben Franklin in Paris (1964), a Lincoln Center revival of Carousel (1965) as Carrie with John Raitt and Jerry Orbach, a New York City Center staging of Where's Charley?, and Jenny in the short-lived musical A Joyful Noise (1966) (again with Raitt), for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.

Watson reunited with Jones and Schmidt for their musical Celebration, which opened on Broadway in January 1969 at the Ambassador Theatre and played in Beggar on Horseback (1970) in repertory at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center before taking on the title role in the Broadway revival of No, No Nanette (1971) with Ruby Keeler.

She appeared at the William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, Kansas, in a tribute to Jones and Schmidt on April 25, 2009.