Lisa Kirk had been a law student at the University of Pittsburgh before she quit and joined the chorus line at Versailles, a celebrated nightclub in New York. In 1947, she made her Broadway debut as Emily in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, Allegro. In the following year, Kirk played Lois Lane and Bianca in Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s hit musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.
During the 1950s, Kirk devoted herself largely to television work, providing the singing voice for Rosalind Russell in the 1962 film adaptation of Sondheim and Styne’s Gypsy. She returned to Broadway in 1963 as the replacement for the lead character, Doris Walker, in Meredith Willson’s musical, Here’s Love.
After another extended period in television, Lisa Kirk made her last musical appearance on Broadway in the short-lived Jerry Herman musical, Mack & Mabel, in 1975, opposite Robert Preston and the ingénue Bernadette Peters.
