“Sally Ann Howes has gotten used to Lerner and Loewe’s songs,” Milton Esterow said in a review for The Times. “She has grace, beauty and a beautiful voice.” Since ‘Brigadoon’ was soon to disappear, Mr. Esterow suggested, ‘Broadway should hurry and find a new show for Miss Howes. Otherwise, some clever gentlemen in Scotland might decide to nominate her for public office.”
In 1964, Mrs. Howes joined Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in Budd Schulberg’s “What Makes Sammy Run?” a Broadway musical about a ruthless young man who betrays friends and loved ones to make his way to the top of a Hollywood studio. The show had 540 performances, although, under pressure from other commitments, Mrs. Howes left after a year.
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During the 1960s she turned increasingly to television, appearing on the shows of Perry Como, Dinah Shore, Jack Paar and Ed Sullivan, and in roles on “The Bell Telephone Hour”, the “Kraft Music Hall” and “United States Steel Hour”. She also had roles on ‘Mission: Impossible’, ‘Marcus Welby, MD’ and ‘Bracken’s World’.
Ms. Howes toured Britain in 1973 in ‘The King and I’ and in 1978 the United States in ‘The Sound of Music’. In the 1970s and 1980s, she sang operettas such as “Blossom Time” and “The Merry Widow” in regional American theaters. Half a century after her triumph as Eliza Doolittle, Mrs. Howes toured the United States in 2007 in “My Fair Lady,” playing the part of Mrs. Higgins, Henry Higgins’ mother. It was her 64th year in show business.
Sally Ann Howes was born in London on July 20, 1930, to comedian Bobby Howes and actress Patricia Malone. Her grandfather, Capt. JAE Malone, directed musicals; an uncle, Pat Malone, was an actor. Sally Ann and her older brother, Peter, a musician, grew up in an affluent household with nannies and her parents’ theatrical peers. During World War II, the family moved for a time to the estate in Essendon, 20 miles north of London.
