Keith Prentice

Biography: According to one of his Playbill biographies, Keith Prentice went to New York City from Dayton, Ohio, in 1958 to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After six months there, he was signed to understudy the juvenile lead in the long-running Broadway hit The Sound of Music, featuring Mary Martin. After skipping through the Alps for a year and a half with that Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Prentice left to understudy the lead in Noel Coward's Sail Away. He played the role several times opposite Elaine Stritch.
His other stage musical credits included the part of Julio in Lerner and Loew's Paint Your Wagon, and The King and I, with Farley Granger and Barbara Cook in Washington, D.C.), as well as Henry Spoffard in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Chick Miller in Wish You Were Here, Neil in Fiorello! Hank in Wildcat, and Nestor in Irma La Douce.
In 1968 he was in the ground-breaking off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band, as a fashion photographer named Larry. (Larry'sAccording to one of his Playbill biographies, Keith Prentice went to New York City from Dayton, Ohio, in 1958 to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After six months there, he was signed to understudy the juvenile lead in the long-running Broadway hit The Sound of Music, featuring Mary Martin. After skipping through the Alps for a year and a half with that Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Prentice left to understudy the lead in Noel Coward's Sail Away. He played the role several times opposite Elaine Stritch.
His other stage musical credits included the part of Julio in Lerner and Loew's Paint Your Wagon, and The King and I, with Farley Granger and Barbara Cook in Washington, D.C.), as well as Henry Spoffard in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Chick Miller in Wish You Were Here, Neil in Fiorello! Hank in Wildcat, and Nestor in Irma La Douce.

In 1968 he was in the ground-breaking off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band, as a fashion photographer named Larry. (Larry's lover, Hank, was played by Laurence Luckinbill.) He later played the same role in the 1970 film version.

In 1971, Prentice joined the cast of the Gothic soap operas Dark Shadows. He appeared in 40 episodes, including the final one, which aired April 2, 1971. In that final outing, Prentice's character, Morgan, dies when he falls from the roof of Collinwood during a skirmish with characters played by John Karlen and Jonathan Frid.

In 1983, Prentice founded the Theatre Under the Stars in his hometown of Kettering, Ohio. He directed productions there for the next decade. He died in Kettering, of AIDS-related complications, on September 27, 1992.… Expand