I met Robert Goulet a grand total of once. It was backstage after an appearance he made in Las Vegas and he was charming and friendly and able to tread an amazing line of ego, being simultaneously self-deprecating but very proud of the performance he had just finished.
Three things I remember. One is that even though he was getting on in years, you could see that at one point, this man was handsome enough to make you hate him. Secondly, that face lit up when I asked him about Alan Jay Lerner, his old friend and one of the creators of the Broadway play, Camelot, which brought stardom to Goulet and vice-versa. He said that in a perfect world, Lerner would still be alive and writing shows as good as that one (or My Fair Lady) and he [Goulet] would be happy to do nothing in life but star in them. Forget the movies and the TV appearances and the records and the concerts. He just wanted to be in shows as good as the one he did with Lerner and Loewe.
Well, at least that's what he said. I'm not sure I believe him, though I'm sure that at that moment, he believed it.
And the third thing I remember was that he told me a joke I can't repeat here, not because it was dirty but because the punch line was insulting to another performer — one who, if the rumors are true, will be the subject of an obit here before long. The funny thing is that a few years later, I worked with that other performer and he told me the same joke…but the punchline was about Robert Goulet. I'll tell it here after the other guy's gone.
I saw Goulet perform that night in Vegas and I saw him again a few years ago at Carnegie Hall in New York. It was part of a salute to Alan Jay Lerner, and he and Kristin Chenoweth did justice to the man's songs. He was very good that evening. But then he was always good, which is why he had such a long and magnificent career.