Michael Crawford

The Man Who Nearly Killed Himself for a Joke

Crawford was not born with a mask glued to his face. Before becoming the most profitable phantom in theater history, Michael Patrick Smith was a young man from Salisbury who earned his living on BBC radio programs. His first real break in film came in 1962 with The War Lover. He shared the bill with Steve McQueen, but no one suspected that this young man would one day be hanging from a chandelier.

Physical comedy was his first religion.

In 1973, Crawford put on a coat that was far too short and a tilted beret to play Frank Spencer in the series Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. It was a mass phenomenon in the United Kingdom, nearing 25 million viewers for its special episodes. But what mattered was not the ratings; he performed all the stunts himself. He hung onto moving cars and skated behind a bus without using stunt doubles.

That obsession with physical control took its toll. During the filming of the three seasons, he suffered repeated injuries that ultimately shaped the way he moved on stage. But audiences only saw a clumsy, lovable guy. By 1969, he had already worked under Gene Kelly in the film Hello, Dolly!, where he had to learn to dance and sing under crushing pressure. Kelly was a tyrannical director who did not take no for an answer.

And the gamble paid off.

The Shadow of the Wax Mask

By the mid-1980s, his career seemed stuck in light comedy. Then the call came from Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer was looking for someone capable of conveying a dangerous vulnerability for his new project at Her Majesty's Theatre. In 1986, Crawford became the lead in The Phantom of the Opera, and the world forgot his television grimaces.

The vocal effort was so extreme that he had to retrain his voice to reach notes he had never explored. He went from being a light baritone to a dramatic tenor with a power that terrified the front rows. In 1988 he won the Tony Award for Best Actor after the show transferred to Broadway. That latex mask became his golden cage for years because no one wanted to see him in another role.

London was at his feet.

But success comes with a physical cost. Crawford developed severe chronic fatigue after years of nonstop performances and a level of self-demand that bordered on the pathological. In 2002, he tried to repeat the phenomenon with the musical Dance of the Vampires in New York. It was an absolute disaster. Critics tore the production apart, and the show lost 12 million dollars, making it one of the biggest financial flops in Broadway history.

In 2011, he returned to London stages to play the Wizard in the Lloyd Webber-produced adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. It was a strategic move to reconnect with the West End after years of silence on record and minor dubbing projects. His voice no longer had the same elasticity, but he kept the magnetism of someone who knows how to command silence in a theater of two thousand people.

In 2016, he starred in the musical The Go-Between at London's Apollo Theatre. During performances, he battled a viral infection that noticeably affected his physical performance. The show closed as scheduled, with no extensions added by the producers. Crawford has since retired to his home in New Zealand, where he has lived out of the spotlight ever since.