Stage career
Lahr began performing in minor parts on vaudeville stages at age 14. He quit school at age 15 to join a juvenile vaudeville act. He eventually received top billing, working for the Columbia Amusement Company. In 1927, he debuted on Broadway in Harry Delmar's Revels on November 28, 1927. He played to packed houses, performing classic routines such as "The Song of the Woodman" (which he reprised in the film Merry-Go-Round of 1938). Lahr's first major success in a stage musical was playing the prizefighter hero of Hold Everything! (1928–29). Other musicals followed, notably Flying High (1930), Florenz Ziegfeld's Hot-Cha! (1932), and The Show is On (1936) in which he co-starred with Beatrice Lillie. In 1939, he co-starred as Louis Blore alongside Ethel Merman in the Broadway production of DuBarry Was a Lady, receiving acclaim.
Among his numerous Broadway roles, Lahr starred as Skid in the Broadway revival of Burlesque from 1946 to 1948 and played several roles, including Queen Victoria, in the original Broadway musical Two on the Aisle from 1951 to 1952.
Lahr later made the transition to straight theater. He got a script of Waiting for Godot, and was greatly impressed but unsure of how the revolutionary play would be received in the United States. It was performed in Europe to great acclaim but was somewhat obscure and intellectual. He co-starred in the US premiere of Waiting for Godot in 1956 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Florida, playing Estragon to Tom Ewell's Vladimir. The performance bombed, with audience members walking out in large numbers, and the critics did not treat it kindly. In his book Notes on a Cowardly Lion, Lahr's son John states that the problems were caused partly by the choices of the director, including the decision to limit Bert's movement on stage; filling the stage with platforms; and a misguided description of the play as a light comedy, along with other difficulties.
Lahr reprised his role in a short-lived Broadway run, co-starring with E. G. Marshall as Vladimir. This time, it was with a new director, Herbert Berghof, who had met with Samuel Beckett, the playwright, in Europe and discussed the play. The set was cleared, and Lahr was allowed more freedom in his performance. Advertisements were taken out urging intellectuals to support the play, which was a success and received enthusiastic ovations from the audience. Lahr was praised and though he claimed he did not understand the play, others would disagree and say he understood it a great deal.
Later performances included Burlesque and Hotel Paradiso on Broadway and A Midsummer Night's Dream with a touring company in the 1950s. In 1962 he returned to Broadway, in S. J. Perelman's The Beauty Part, and won the 1965 Tony for Best Actor in a musical for Foxy, an adaption of Volpone.
