(David Rooney’s article appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, 3/21.)
Later in his career, Williams was a choreographer, director and actor in Los Angeles.
Sammy Williams, who won a Tony Award in Michael Bennett’s groundbreaking original Broadway production of A Chorus Line, has died. He was 69.
Family spokeswoman and friend Brandee Barnaby says Williams died of cancer Saturday in Los Angeles.
Williams won a Tony for best featured actor in 1976 for the role of Paul San Marco in A Chorus Line, the landmark musical with a score by Marvin Hamlisch about the inner lives of dancers auditioning for the ensemble of a big show. Paul is a painfully shy young Puerto Rican performer just beginning to feel comfortable about being gay; he is reluctantly coaxed to revisit an emotional episode from the past in which his parents learned of his sexuality while he was working in a drag act.
