Music From the Cemetery

John Gary was singing “Danny Boy,” an emotional Irish ballad about war and loss that can reduce strong men to tears. His rich tenor voice lay over Maldonado’s restaurant like a blanket of silk. No one spoke. No one moved. Magic was in the air.

Delivered with even a minimum of skill, the song commands respect, but not like this. The intensity of concentration was more than a tribute to the tune or to the quality of Gary’s voice. It was acknowledgment of a miracle.

We were hearing music from a man who should have died at least six months ago. “Danny Boy” was like a melody after a funeral, delivered from the grave.

Miracle is a term too casually applied in show biz. The fact that a movie makes money or a television series catches on are defined as miracles by those who expected less. But in Gary’s case, the word works.

In January, 1991, he was diagnosed as having terminal cancer. It had spread from his prostate gland to his lymph glands and to his spine. At best, they gave him two years to live.

“It was such a small amount of time,” Gary says, remembering the moment. “I couldn’t breathe when they said those words. ‘Inoperable and terminal.’ I was in shock.”

Most abandon hope at that point and watch life drift off like a stick in a tide, with no effort made to retrieve it.

But there was one word the doctors hadn’t used when they set the limits on Gary’s life. They hadn’t said incurable. To the 60-year-old singer, it made a difference.

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Everybody knows John Gary, and likes him. Affable and easygoing, he’s an anomaly in the entertainment business, a man who can wear success and deep personal values to the same party without strain.

He’s been married to one woman for 22 years. They have five children. The president of his fan club has seen 500 of his performances. She was at Maldonado’s in Pasadena the other night when he made his comeback.

Gary has been singing since he was 9, but it wasn’t until he moved from Upstate New York to Manhattan in 1962 that he was “discovered” while performing at a private gathering. Shortly thereafter, he signed a contract with RCA records that would turn out 28 albums.

He had a one-man show at Carnegie Hall and throughout the 1960s and ‘70s was a regular on television variety shows, first as a guest and then with his own series. He was one of the top 10 singers in America.

During and after his television years, he performed on Broadway and in Las Vegas, and was a familiar face, and voice, at nightclubs and supper clubs around the world. Maldonado’s, with its soft lights and colonial Spanish decor, was always one of his favorite places.

Word of his illness spread quickly, and a $5,000-a-couple benefit was planned to raise money for his medical treatment. Top names in the business were invited to attend and perform.

Once a headliner, Gary seemed a dying has-been. Bookings were canceled when club owners heard of his illness. They couldn’t count on the quality of his voice or even if he would be alive to appear. To some, he was already a dead man.

It made no difference to those invited to his benefit. The Rooftop Atrium of the Bel Age Hotel was packed. Liza Minnelli was there, and so were Whoopi Goldberg, Ann-Margret, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini, Mel Torme, Perry Como, and too many others to list.

It was a party with a somber tone. No one expected Gary to last much longer. One of those in attendance, radio and television personality Gary Owens, said, “We thought we were going to a funeral.”

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John Gary thought differently. Because the word incurable hadn’t been used, he began searching through books for a way to overcome the disease.

He read that the male hormone testosterone hastened the spread of cancer, so he underwent surgery to reduce its effect. Then he adopted a program of herbal therapy, ingesting teas and pills on a regular basis.

Finally, he practiced visualization, a mental process in which a victim sees the cancer flow from his body. There was no chemotherapy, no radiation treatment.

Today, tests show him to be cancer-free. The tumors are gone. The doctors can’t explain it.

“I don’t know if surgery, herbs, or visualization did it,” Gary says. “I know it sounds corny, but love helped. So much of it came from so many places . . . “

It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he stood among the soft lights that night in a restaurant hushed by the sound of his voice and the nature of his return.

What matters is that he brought Danny Boy back from the war to a meadow soft with winter, and life to a spotlight that almost went out.

The comeback was glorious.