Broadway/stock Debut
1964 found him playing a bit part at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in the Broadway production of Hamlet, which starred Richard Burton. As a result he appeared in the Richard Burton's Hamlet |film version of the show released by Warner Bros. in 1964. That same year he made his first Off-Broadway appearance in the anti capital-punishment musical Hang Down Your Head and Die at the Mayfair Theatre with friend James Rado, a fellow actor who was studying with Lee Strasberg. It only played one performance before being shut down by the government. In a 2008 interview with The Advocate Rado described himself as omnisexual and Ragni's lover.
Soon after this he took on the role of Tom in the smash-hit The Knack at the New Theatre of Brooklyn, later appearing in the touring company of the show with Rado. At the show's Chicago run that year Rado and Ragni tried to revive Hang Down Your Head and Die with as much of the script as they remembered. They also planned to introduce some new songs and material in a collaboration with Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, of the Siegel-Schwall Band, whom they met playing in a beatnik coffee house off the Harper Street strip. They spent time writing ideas for the show which was to be a four-man presentation performed by Rado, Ragni, Schwall and Siegel in a house on the South Side of Chicago and an apartment on Stony Island Avenue. Rado and Ragni rented the Harper Theatre, where The Knack was showing, to perform the musical. Two weeks later the company went back to New York and they had to leave, abandoning their plans for Hang down your head and die.
Read more about this topic: Gerome Ragni
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