For Broadway and the heyday of musical comedy -- America's unique contribution to theater. When the stars of stage were household names; when there was magic in the theater addresses and you knew not only the lyrics but the dialogue by heart; when you devoured the bios of the producers and directors, the composers and lyricists on the front of Playbill and combed the back of the program to find the name or photo of your favorite dancer in the chorus. When the opening reviews were eagerly awaited not just by readers of the NYT, but across the country in the weekly news magazines and the Sunday papers.

That brief frisson that comes as the lights dim and the orchestra launches into the overture hit me for a moment when I read that Jerry Orbach had died. For me, Jerry Orbach was the epitome of that Broadway -- the great male counterpart of the female legends who made musicals come alive, who let you suspend disbelief and be transported to an imaginary world for a couple of hours. Not the glamorous leading baritones of Rogers and Hammerstein, with their moving melodies, who were the romantic foils for the sassy or brassy leading ladies or the blossoming ingenues. No, Orbach was the "journeyman" Broadway star who created some of Broadway's most memorable characters by his attitude, his natural jazzy rhythms of speech and saunter, by the seamless shift of voice and movement from actor to song-and-dance man and back again. By the contagious joy he infused each of his roles and the players around him.

The Glittering Eye offers an appreciation of Jerry Orbach's special contribution -- both the artist and the colleague -- and notes his passing is an end of an era.