David Holliday
David Holliday (August 4, 1937March 26, 1999) was an American Broadway actor and television voice actor. He is best known as the voice of Virgil Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird 2, in the first series (26 episodes) of Thunderbirds (1965–66). Career Stage Holliday's longest-running role on Broadway was that of Richard Kiley's alternate as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, playing Don Quixote in matinees and Dr Carrasco in the evening performances, from 1965 to 1971 (and later took on the role of the innkeeper in the 1992 revival). His next performance, as Georges in Coco, (1969 – 1970) earned him a Theatre World Award. He also appeared in the musicals Nevertheless They Laugh (Off Broadway 1971), Music Is (1976) and Perfectly Frank (1980). In 1956 Holliday went to New York and auditioned for a part in West Side Story; he was given the minor role of Glad Hand, and to understudy Tony, in the London production. He then went on to play the lead role of Tony in the West End, during this time he met the young David Jason who was working as an electrician at the time doing work on his London flat and give him tickets to the show. The show also touring England, Scotland and Scandinavia, reprising this role again in 1963 and 1967 at the St. Louis Municipal Opera House. Holliday had two 1966 London Cast recordings to his credit; one with Jill Martin, and the other with Diane Todd, in the role of Maria. He would spend the next ten years commuting between Britain, Europe, the United States, and South Africa where he toured for six months in the role of Macheath in The Beggar's Opera. In 1962 a phone call from, and a subsequent meeting with, British actor-director Noël Coward led to the role of John Van Mier in the London production of Sail Away at the Savoy Theatre, London, with Elaine Stritch reprising her Broadway role as Mimi Paragon; the London production ran for 265 performances. 1964 saw Holliday in the lead role of Edward Middleton in The Wayward Way, the musical version of The Drunkard, at the New Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith; the cast included Roberta D'Esti as Mary, Jim Dale as William Dowton, Cheryl Kennedy as Agnes Dowton, John Gower as the villainous Squire Cribbs, and Bernard Clifton as the landlord and Arden Rencelaw. September 1965 saw him at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, in the role of Dr Seward, in the musical Dearest Dracula, with John Gower as Dracula, Mary Millar as Lucy, Robert Hornery as Jonathan Harker, David Morton as Sir Arthur Holmwood, and Pitt Wilkinson as Dr Van Helsing. In 1967, a meeting in New York with Danish actor-director Preben Kaas led to the role of Frank Butler in the Danish version of the musical Annie Get Your Gun, at the Falconer Theatre in Copenhagen (1967–68), with Daimi Gentle as Annie; this meant an intensive study in phonetics as the role required Holliday singing and speaking in Danish,