Robert Emmett, the New York actor and TV writer who died April 8, will be remembered at a memorial 3 PM April 29 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City.
Emmett, who met the actress Kim Hunter while they were working together in summer stock, and later married her, was 78. He died after surgery for appendicitis.
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A Monterey, CA, native who changed his surname from McMenamin, Emmett attended the University of California at Berkeley and served in World War II before moving to New York City to look for acting jobs.
He learned to act under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his Broadway debut in Peer Gynt starring John Garfield, directed by Lee Strasberg, and later appeared in Two on the Aisle with Bert Lahr and Midsummer with Geraldine Page. Off Broadway, he played opposite Jessica Tandy in Madame, Will You Walk, which was the first production of the Phoenix Theatre. At Theatre De Lys Off Broadway, he played the title role in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Emmett appeared in a 1950 touring production of Two Blind Mice, starring Melvyn Douglas and Kim Hunter. The Times reported he met Hunter two years earlier when he was apprenticing and she was acting at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, but he didn't get to know her until the Mice tour. They married in 1951.
Other New York appearances include Eye of the Beholder, Mother Jay and King James and the Indian.
He wrote for TV programs, including specials with Jack Jones, Barbra Streisand, Julie Andrews and others, and wrote the script for a cult 1965 TV musical, "The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood," with songs by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. Liza Minnelli and Cyril Ritchard starred.
He was also the Emmy Award-nominated head writer for TV's "That Was the Week That Was," a satirical program.
In 1970, he appeared with Carol Channing in Carol Channing and Her Ten Stout-Hearted Men at the Drury Lane in London.
In 1999, he starred in On Golden Pond with Hunter at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, NJ.
-- By Kenneth Jones
