Keith Prentice

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Keith Prentice
Born	February 21, 1940(1940-02-21) Dayton, Ohio
Died	September 27, 1992 (aged 52) Kettering, Ohio
Occupation	Stage, film, television actor

Keith Prentice (February 21, 1940 – September 27, 1992) was a Dayton, Ohio-born American soap opera actor who appeared on Dark Shadows as Morgan Collins in the 1841 Parallel Time storyline during the final months on the air in 1971.

He appeared in the off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band, which was later adapted into a film in 1970. On Broadway, he appeared in The Sound of Music as Rolf and as Shuttleworth in Sail Away.

In 1958, at age 18, Keith left his home state of Ohio for New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After six months there, he was signed to understudy the juvenile lead in the long-running Broadway hit The Sound of Music, featuring Mary Martin. After skipping through the Alps for a year and a half in that Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Prentice left to understudy the lead in Noel Coward's Sail Away. He played the role several times opposite Elaine Stritch.

His other stage musical credits included the part of Julio in Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon, and The King and I, with Farley Granger and Barbara Cook in Washington, D.C., as well as Henry Spoffard in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Chick Miller in Wish You Were Here, Neil in Fiorello!, Hank in Wildcat, and Nestor in Irma La Douce.

In 1968 he appeared off-Broadway in the non-musical The Boys in The Band, a controversial play featuring gay characters at a dramatic birthday party. Today, with gay-themed TV shows and movies like Will & Grace and Trick finding mainstream success, it may be difficult to imagine how ground-breaking Prentice's play was.

After completing the movie version of Boys in the Band in 1970, he joined the cast of Dark Shadows. Keith, who was gay, became a friend and frequent house guest of Louis Edmonds and his lover Bryce. "Keith always brightened his corner here," Louis once told me, at his Long Island home. "He gave me a lovely smoking jacket that I kept wearing until it was in tatters."

Before the summer of 1983, he co-founded Kettering Theatre Under The Stars. Keith had watched the 1970s decline of regional theatre. He hoped Kettering Theatre Under The Stars would inspire regional theatre as well provide young performers an outlet. Yes, Kettering Theatre Under The Stars is a community theater. Local Broadcast personalities normally played the leads. Their first performance was Paint Your Wagon (1982) followed by Music Man (1983). These performances were held at Fairmont West Amphitheater. Keith used the adjacent roofs for smaller scenes. The Amphitheater was where the large choral scenes played out. Exterior stairs were built allowing action to flow up and down roof tops to center stage. These stairs were dis-assembled, stored, and re-used each season. Keith stored the massive timber within his garage.

During Music Man production, the City of Kettering (Ohio) began planning the Fraze Pavilion. Kettering Theatre Under The Stars had to find a new home in Kettering; the Kettering Board of Education Building, Clark Haines Theatre.

He died of cancer on September 27, 1992 in Kettering, Ohio. Contrary to many online rumors he did not have AIDS and his HIV test given at the time of his cancer diagnosis came back negative. This can be verified on his death certificate.^[1]