Following a Dream

On a warm spring evening in April 1983, the stage production of “Showboat” starring Donald O’Connor opened on Broadway in the glitter and glow of the Gershwin Theater. In the cast was an Asheville-area woman, Joanna Beck, who had completed the year’s tour around the nation with the O’Connor cast as singer and dance captain. Before that she had spent seven years singing and dancing in New York theater productions and major road shows, preparing especially for this experience of performing on Broadway.

To make the evening sweeter, in the audience were her proud mother, Ruth Beck, and 4-year-old niece, Anna, both of whom vigorously applauded Joanna’s every move.

“Broadway,” Beck said, “was in a sense like any other theater in the country except we got to go home at night instead of to a hotel. That is not to negate the excitement of being on Broadway—it’s on another level.

 “The entire cast is excited, everyone running around trying to warm up body and voice, getting makeup on, wishing each other good luck—and then the stage manager calls ‘places’ and everyone gets into place, and the overture begins. Just hearing the overture is a big thrill.”

Beck toured the United States for two years with “Cats,” and then performed in it on Broadway, playing the dual roles of Griddlebone and Jellylorum. Her automobile license plate today reads JELYLORM.

“It’s pure magic,” she said, “especially when it’s a big, popular show like “Cats” or “Showboat.”  At the end, all in the theater are on their feet, hundreds standing applauding, and you realize you have helped give them a pleasant evening, and for some an experience they have never had before and will never forget. You realize you have helped remove them from their problems for a little while, and that in itself is a blessing.” 

Beck was a country girl who grew up in the Beaverdam Community immediately north of Asheville. She attended Asheville High School and planned to study computer programming and work for IBM. But as a teen after a summer singing in her first musical, Carnival, with the Asheville Youth Theater, she had an overpowering dream of one day singing and dancing on Broadway. 

“Just try it,” her mother said.

So she did — and loved it. Her New York career lasted 16 years in which she sang and danced in theaters and often across the United States in year-long road shows with major stars in productions like “Cats,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Annie,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and “Showboat.” She also performed in dinner theaters in a couple of states. After Broadway, she performed in New York and road shows for another nine years before calling it quits, returning home to become a successful real estate agent. 

 “I didn’t become a star,” Beck said, “but that was never my goal. I just wanted to work doing what I loved — and I did that for almost two decades. My belief is that God has a plan for each of us and stardom just wasn’t in His plan for me.” 

She still uses her operatic voice as a member and featured soloist for the Central United Methodist Church choir in downtown Asheville and in other singing appearances throughout Western North Carolina, where she’s found even more fans.            

“Anyone who knows Joanna understands that she is a musician of [the] highest quality,” said Russell Nelson, director of music ministries at Central United Methodist Church in Asheville. “The fact that she had a successful career on Broadway certainly speaks of her innate God-given talent, as well as her tireless hard work, determination, and dedication. Yet, there is a humility and grace about her persona that makes her unique.”

Beck was born with music in her voice.  

“I just opened my mouth,” she said, “and out it came.”  

She sang her first solo at the age of four in a church Christmas production. 

 Her father, Joseph Beck, was an Asheville city bus driver who died of a heart attack while driving down Haywood Street when it was full of  Christmas shoppers. His bus crashed over a sidewalk and into the Wachovia Bank Building. Miraculously no one was injured. Joanna’s mother managed the Dogwood Terrace and Sunset Terrace dining areas at Grove Park Inn for many years. She died in 2003 of heart failure.

Beck had chosen the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for college because, she said, it was the best in the state for music performance at that time. After graduating in 1975, she set out for the bright lights of a big city. That September, at the age of 22, she boarded a plane in Asheville for New York City. 

“I knew I was taking a chance,” she said, “but I didn’t want to get to the point in life where I was sitting in a rocking chair, wondering what would have happened had I tried.”

Before December ended, she auditioned alongside a thousand others vying  for a part in a bicentennial show at the Grand Ole Opry  and won one of the 10 singing parts. She sang and danced in that show for a year in Nashville.  

Between shows, Beck took jobs through a “temp” agency and was once  sent to CBS News, where she was given a permanent job working for “CBS Morning News.” She was there during the day for five years and  sang with the New York City Opera in the evenings. As a unit manager for “CBS Morning News,” she worked with Charles Kuralt. Her job was to make certain the crew had everything they needed to get on and off the air. She left that job after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.  

“I worked in the trailer that morning,” she said, “and we had cameras on the inauguration and also in Iran where they were letting the [American] hostages go. As soon as President Reagan took office, Iran let the planes carrying the hostages leave Tehran. That was exciting work.” 

Even so, Beck knew that in order to find her way to Broadway, she needed to devote more time to audition for roles. In a twist of fate, one “mishap” turned out to be the beginning of her illustrious singing career. At CBS she had to be at work by 6 a.m., and one morning when she arrived  wearing jeans, she realized she had forgotten an audition that day with the New York City Opera Company. Without a chance to change clothing, she made her way to the audition. The aria she sang was from a “trouser role” in which women dressed as boys. She won the part over others who were dressed to the nines.

“An audition in New York,” she explained, “is a cattle call. We signed in early in the morning, then waited around in long lines and usually in the afternoon we got our turns. We were called in to sing maybe eight bars of music, or perhaps 16, and that was an audition. However, if we were auditioning for a particular part we might get to sing the whole song.”

Intent on trying to crack into movies or television, she flew out to Los Angeles in 1991 but was unsuccessful in finding the work she wanted because her entire background had been on the stage. 

So she began to teach voice lessons, and for a year-and-a-half one of her students was a 15-year-old named Josh Groban, who later ascended to such heights in the world of music that in the spring of 2007 he played New York’s Madison Square Garden. For that show, ticket prices ranged from $109 to $1,010.

Donald O’Connor was one of Beck’s favorite people with whom she sang and danced. 

“Donald was a friendly guy,” Beck said. “His dressing room door was always open, and if we had family or friends come backstage, he was out there taking pictures with them.”

While working at Bob Hope’s 90th Birthday Celebration, long after she played in “Showboat” with O’Connor, she was walking to the stage to work in her booth and met him  coming toward her. He was so happy to see her that he later brought his wife Gloria and, pointing to Beck, said, “There she is; I told you she was here!”   

The evening of Hope’s party, she played the kazoo with Milton Berle and joked with Don Rickles.  

“There were so many stars,” she said, “It was almost overwhelming.”

Once, Beck sang on “The Tonight Show,” backing Sarah Brightman. Later in London, Beck did a concert with Brightman and her husband, the celebrated Broadway director Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Beck moved back to Asheville in 2003 and worked for a year with her uncle, Leroy Gaddy, rebuilding a house.  

“I helped put up gutters, painted and put down floors, and helped with the plumbing,” she said. “I learned how to use a drill, hammer and nails, saws, and other tools. That was fun.”

Today, Beck lives a quiet life selling real estate. She’ll sometimes burst into song in the shower or when driving down the road, listening to the radio as a song she likes comes on the air. Music will always be the love of her life.