At the age of 15, Bob Gaudio had his first hit with the future Nair commercial Short Shorts.

Now 66, he's the star of one of the biggest hits on Broadway, and he never takes the stage. Rather, he's played by an actor in the show Jersey Boys, which traces the improbable rise to stardom of the Four Seasons.

"It's, to say the least, surreal," Gaudio said. "It's reliving my life with a 20-minute intermission every night."

In Denver, he'll be played by Colorado Springs native Josh Franklin. Watching the show, Gaudio has been offered an odd vision of his younger self - not necessarily the one he has in his mind.

"Extremely intelligent, handsome, talented," he said jokingly. "In actuality, when I look at some of the guys playing the role, it's astounding how much talent they actually have. What we had, I suppose, was originality.

"The truth is, I really don't know what I was like when I was 15, 16. Frankie (Valli) probably had the better observation of me than I would. But you know, it changes with every actor. Everybody's got a different little swagger, and somewhere in the middle is me."

Doo wop boot camp

Valli and Gaudio met in their teens, making a business agreement over a handshake that has held for four decades and has led to them retaining the rights to their music. Shrewd business decisions have been based on early mistakes.

"The song Short Shorts, which became a Nair commercial for 20 years, was not even published and copyrighted under the name of the true writers of the songs. The manager had put his own name on it as a songwriter. I certainly learned very quickly what not to do in the future. It was a good training ground. It was boot camp for me," Gaudio said.

"We knew that we should own the publishing wherever we could. We had good management. We had Jerry Weintraub. We were able to get things done, maybe that would not be the norm at the time."

And, amazingly, they never descended into legal rancor with one another, despite having their partnership based on flesh rather than contracts.

"It is unheard of, and I've been asked that question, 'Would you recommend that in this day and age?', and the answer is no," Gaudio said. "There's just certain codes and certain relationships that you honor. That's just the way it was. It was sort of a blessed situation, and so is the show."

The other members of the Four Seasons ran on the edge of the New Jersey mafia before finding success, but Gaudio came from the other side of the tracks.

"My parents got me out of the Bronx because the gangs were prevalent there," he said. "In the show, I am squeaky clean, but I don't think I was quite that squeaky."

Gaudio was playing with school friends when he stumbled into success. They were the backup band at a teen hop in a church basement in Fort Lee, N.J., when the headliners' manager noticed them.

"He kind of thought we had something going, and we were playing instrumentals at the time. He was a small label, I think it was called Admiration Records or something like that. He brought us into the studio to do a demo and lo and behold, the instrumental version of Short Shorts is what came out of that. But instrumental records weren't so popular anymore, and we came up with a little chant driving up and down the local drag strip on a Saturday night," Gaudio remembers.

From charts to the stage

Gaudio wrote most of the songs for the Four Seasons, with Valli the lead singer. Together, they absorbed the sound of rhythm and blues. Fans initially thought they were black, and their first hit, 1962's Sherry, went No. 1 on the R&B charts before it hit the pop charts.

They went on to have a string of hits, ever-present on the radio if not on the charts of cool.

Gaudio's first foray into musical theater was adapting Francis Ford Coppola's film Peggy Sue Got Married for the stage, which played in London but didn't make it to Broadway. He found a fan of the Four Seasons in then-artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse Des McAnuff, who connected Gaudio and Valli with Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who shaped the songs into the story of the band's history.

"Being that they're two Jews writing about four Italians from Newark when they're from the Upper West Side of New York, it's a strange combination," Gaudio said.

"I think what infatuated them was not so much the music but the story, the depth to the story and the fact that they could turn this into something other than a jukebox musical."

Gaudio, Valli and the band's founder, Tommy DeVito, offered their stories but stood out of the way.

"We did have veto power, if you will, and we did speak with Marshall and Rick constantly telling our story. They really picked our brain, and they got the essence of everything. And then they went off and wrote," he said.

"Frankie and I intentionally left them alone. When you're dealing with talent of that magnitude, you just don't peer over their shoulder. It doesn't make for a good outcome. Essentially, it was hands-off. So we really didn't know when we showed up opening night in La Jolla what we were going to get."

What they got was a Tony Award-winning musical, and yet another bid at pop immortality.

bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

Jersey Boys

* When and where: Through Jan. 3 in the Buell Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, Speer Boulevard and Arapahoe Street

* Cost: $40 and up; limited tickets remain

* Information: 303-893-4100

Actor, songwriter puts Colorado spin on his 'Jersey' boy

This Jersey Boy hails from Colorado Springs. After performing on Broadway in Grease and Legally Blonde, Josh Franklin, 27, is joining the tour of Jersey Boys as songwriter Bob Gaudio. It's an easy fit - Franklin is a songwriter himself; you can check him out at joshfranklin.net.

We caught up with him in Toronto, where he was rehearsing.

So what was your performing background like in Colorado?

I studied at Rocky Mountain School of the Arts, now Colorado Springs Conservatory, founded by Linda Weiss. I was just taking voice lessons from her, and she's a very ambitious woman, and just a few years later she has this entire school.

So which came first, the acting or the singing?

It kind of was simultaneous, but I didn't really put them together until late high school and college. I sang at church and did all the church plays. At 14, I did the show Runaways at a community theater in Colorado Springs. That kind of got me into the world of acting more because it was an intense piece about these runaway kids in New York City. For me, it was a way I was able to escape whatever I was going through at the time and into another character.

So how do you go from the Rocky Mountains to inner-city New Jersey?

It's funny that I'm doing the show Jersey Boys because they all came out of this rough neighborhood. I was hanging out with these bad kids, and I was expelled in eighth grade for cutting class. I smoked when I was a kid and drank, and I was a nightmare for my mom. But then it all turned around right around high school, when I got into band and music and put into leadership positions. I was in student council and I was the drum major, and that sort of gave me a reason to get away from these kids who were a bad influence, which is sort of the same story as the Four Seasons.

Wow. You got expelled? What was that like?

It sort of forced me to get a new set of friends. It's a weird thing when you're 14 to have to adapt to a new environment.

Now you're playing a living person in a hugely successful show. Is it intimidating?

I'm in my fourth week of rehearsal . . . I've been e-mailing the writer, Rick Elice, back and forth, and he's good friends with Bob (Gaudio). (Gaudio) sent me an e-mail welcoming me to the Jersey Boys family. They're all very, very passionate about this show, which is great. But he just gave me an insight to the character.

What kind of insight?

Just about the way that Bob works and the way he appeals to Frankie Valli and their relationship. Bob sort of came in and made them all a big success because of his business knowledge and musical knowledge.

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