About Barbara Cook
Barbara Cook was an American actress and singer who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy (1955), Candide (1956) and The Music Man (1957) among others, winning a Tony Award for the last. She continued performing mostly in theatre until the mid-1970s, when she began a second career as a cabaret and concert singer. She also made numerous recordings. Also in 1952, Cook made her first television appearance on the show Armstrong Circle Theatre which presented her in an original play entitled Mr. That summer, she returned to City Center to portray Carrie Pipperidge in a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, which Cook described as "the first time the critics really paid attention to me. In 1957 she appeared in a second City Center revival of Carousel, this time in the role of Julie Jordan, and won a Tony Award for creating the role of Marian the Librarian in Meredith Willson's 1957 hit The Music Man. In 1963, she created the role of Amalia Balash in the classic Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.