With the opening last night of the Roundabout’s revival of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” it seems fitting to recall a wonderful actor who was once a staple of the New York stage — and whose grisly murder in 1988 shocked the close-knit Broadway theater community and made headlines in The Post.
George Rose played the Master of Ceremonies in the original 1986 production of “Drood,” Rupert Holmes’ musical adaptation of Dickens’ last, unfinished novel. Rose’s jaunty performance at the Tony Awards that year can be seen on YouTube, and I defy you not to become a little jaunty yourself as he sings the opening song, “There You Are.”
“This man is surely one of the comic treasures of the literate theater,” wrote then-Times drama critic Frank Rich.
Rose won a Tony, his second, in the role. He won his first in 1976 as Alfred P. Doolittle in a revival of “My Fair Lady.”
“He was a great guy, and very helpful to me in the show,” says Betty Buckley, who played Edwin Drood in drag. “I was trying to play a boy, and he brought in several books from his extensive library about the history of the British Music Hall. The girls used to put on pants and play boy roles in the shows. Some of them became quite famous, and George knew all about them. He really mentored me in the role.”
Rose, who was born in Bicester, England, was known as a scholarly actor. His Greenwich Village loft was packed with books on the history of the theater. The shelves also groaned with some 2,000 records — classical, musical theater (British and American) and jazz. He knew the lyrics to just about every Noël Coward song, and he excelled at playing Coward’s light comic touch.
“Noël had this extraordinary thing of being highly frivolous and yet at the same time promoting a kind of deep common sense,” he once said.
Like Coward, Rose didn’t suffer fools.
He adored playing opposite Cleo Laine in “Drood,” but when she was replaced with Loretta Swit, he wasn’t pleased.
“I’ll never forget the day after she gave her first performance, he threatened to quit the show,” says press agent Richard Kornberg.
Rose, who began acting at the Old Vic in London when he was 20, was as funny as he was eccentric. He hated the old seedy Times Square, calling it “Ed Koch’s Casbah.” A cat nut, he kept as pets a lynx and South American wildcat. Friends say his apartment smelled like Grey Gardens.
A bachelor, he never discussed his sexuality. But the sordid details came tumbling out in May 1988.
Rose owned a house by the sea in the Dominican Republic. He adopted a 17-year-old local boy named Juan, whom he made heir to his $2 million estate. On May 5, Rose’s body was found strewn next to the wreckage of his car on a dirt road near his house. At first, the police called his death an accident. But friends in New York had other ideas and, at Kornberg’s urging, both The Post and the Times sent reporters down to investigate.
It quickly emerged that Rose had been tortured for hours before being bludgeoned to death. Police arrested Juan, his biological father and two other men. According to published reports at the time, all admitted to kidnapping and killing Rose. Juan, however, was released from jail after a year, and retracted his confession; the three other men were never convicted of the crime.
Juan said he and Rose were lovers but that Rose had turned his attention to another boy. Juan’s real father, reports said at the time, feared his son would be disinherited.
Twenty-four years later, mystery still surrounds Rose’s death. His friends have a hard time believing the sad, sleazy tale.
“It was easy to dismiss it as some old f – – – -t molesting the local boy, but I don’t believe it,” Kornberg says. “George never acted like a lover. He acted paternal. He was very proud of that kid.”
Rose’s body is buried in an unmarked grave in a ratty cemetery in the Dominican Republic.
A more fitting tribute to his talent would be to induct him, posthumously, into the Theater Hall of Fame.