REBECCA LUKER, 1961-2020

CAN’T HELP LOVING THAT MAN OF MINE, 2014. Rebecca Luker with her husband, Danny. Burstein, at the Tony Awards.

TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Rebecca Luker died at a New York City hospital. She was 59, much too young. It had been less than a year since the revelation of her A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig’s disease) diagnosis, much too soon. She had been starring on Broadway, evolving from starry-eyed ingénue to sad-eyed matron, for three decades. And that was not nearly long enough.

When she and I met, in 1998, it was for a New York Times interview at a coffee shop (her choice of venue) on West 72nd. She was beautiful, gifted, radiant and newly in love, so I kind of wanted to hate her. But we had a couple of things in common.

MEMORIES, 2011. Luker, with the cast of “Death Takes a Holiday.” Her character was an Italian duchess mourning her son.

We’d grown up in neighboring Southern small towns, so close together that our high school football teams had played each other. Much more important, we’d both recently bought pot racks for our kitchens — and were equally thrilled with all the possibilities.

The theater editor (Andrea Stevens, at the time) was disappointed in the resulting article, because it didn’t concentrate enough on how sexy Luker had been in her most recent role. In an Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse,” she was a love-starved wife who never knew her husband had a twin. The editor was probably right about the article, but right after that, Luker returned to type, playing a nun-turned-nanny in “The Sound of Music.” With that clear, crystal soprano voice, casting directors just couldn’t resist making her the innocent.

I had the honor of writing Luker’s Times obituary. I’d hoped it wouldn’t need to be published for years and years. Here’s another look at her life.

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BROADWAY BABY, 1989. Luker made her Broadway debut as Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera.” She had joined the show as the star actress’s understudy.

HOW AND WHEN DID REBECCA LUKER GET HER START ON BROADWAY?

Technically, her Broadway debut was in “The Phantom of the Opera.” After understudying Sarah Brightman, the musical’s original female star, she took on that role — Christine, the chorus girl worshiped by the phantom — in 1989. She stayed with the show until 1991. The first Broadway character she originated, however, was a ghost: Lily, the little orphan heroine’s dead aunt, in “The Secret Garden” the same year.

REGRETS? HELEN HAD A FEW, 2016 Luker as Helen, the young gay heroine’s frustrated and borderline-fed-up mother in “Fun Home.” She played the role for a month.

WHAT WAS HER FINAL BROADWAY ROLE?

Again, let’s look at two shows. Luker’s final performances on a Broadway stage were at the Circle in the Square Theater, on 50th Street, in the multi-Tony-winning “Fun Home.” For a month in 2016, she replaced Judy Kuhn as the young heroine’s mother, Helen, whose husband is gay and closeted, whose daughter is coming out as lesbian and whose big number, focusing on her own sacrifices, is “Days and Days.”

THE GODMOTHER, PART II, 2013 Luker’s next-to-last Broadway role was as Marie the fairy godmother in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella.” She was 52.

YOU SAID “TWO SHOWS”?

Exactly. Helen was a decidedly unglamorized character, but Luker’s penultimate Broadway role — which she played from September 2013 to January 2014 — was just the opposite. She was Marie, the golden-haired fairy godmother in “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” a bejeweled, beruffled, resplendent makeover expert who wasn’t above a little snark. Funny thing about Luker’s stepping into the role: She was replacing Victoria Clark, who was going on leave to appear in “The Snow Geese,” opposite Danny Burstein, Luker’s husband.

WORKING FROM HOME, 2020 Luker gave a Zoom benefit concert in June from her Manhattan apartment.

THAT’S A LONG TIME TO BE AWAY FROM THE STAGE.

Luker did other things. In 2019, she played a minister’s wife in a Kennedy Center production of “Footloose.” Even after announcing her diagnosis in February 2020, she appeared at a concert for Sheldon Harnick. And in June, six months before her death, she starred in a Zoom concert recorded in her Upper West Side apartment. It was a benefit for a promising new ALS treatment.

WAS SHE A SOUTHERN GIRL?

To the core. Rebecca Joan Luker was born in Birmingham, Ala., on April 17, 1961, and grew up 15 miles away — in Helena, a town of 19,000, where she attended Thompson High School. When she went “away” to college, it was at the University of Montevallo, 14 miles from Helena (in the other direction).

DID SHE HAVE A FAMILY OF HER OWN?

Luker met Danny Burstein when both were appearing in a new musical in La Jolla, Calif., in the late 1990s. They married in 2000, and his career kept pace with hers. He later starred on Broadway in “Cabaret,” “Fiddler on the Roof, “ “My Fair Lady” and “Moulin Rouge!” She was stepmother to his two sons, Zachary and Alexander.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH LOVE, 1996 Luker as Magnolia Ravenal, the wide-eyed teenager who makes a bad marriage in “Show Boat.” She was 35.

WHAT WERE LUKER’S BIGGEST ROLES?

It seems she rarely had a small role. But her three Tony nominations were for “Show Boat,” in which she played the captain’s naive daughter who falls for a riverboat gambler; “The Music Man,” as Marian the Librarian, a small-town spinster who captures the heart of a con man; and “Mary Poppins,” in which she played the title nanny’s employer, Mrs. Banks, a British wife and mother with a heart full of nostalgia.