Casting Director Shirley Rich Dies at 87

Her work in theater included collaborations with Harold Prince and Rodgers and Hammerstein. She is widely credited with having discovered Yul Brynner for the team’s The King and I. Among her other Broadway credits are Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Zorba, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Sly Fox, and the 1983 revival of Private Lives, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Cullum.

Her work for the screen includes films such as Serpico, where she cast a young Judd Hirsch and Taps, where Sean Penn and Tom Cruise played military cadets. She also cast the actors James Spader, Edward Norton, Rod Steiger, and Sada Thompson early in their careers. Among her other screen credits are Three Days of the Condor, Kramer vs. Kramer and The Ballad of the Sad Café. She also assembled the original cast of the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope.