Kathie Lee sets sights on Broadway

NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- Kathie Lee Gifford's musical has opened in New York, the first of three shows she hopes will end up on Broadway.

"Under the Bridge," Gifford's adaptation of a children's book about a Paris hobo and the homeless family that wins him over, opened Friday Off Broadway.

Gifford, 51, hopes a second musical previews later this year and she is working on a third, The New York Times reported Sunday.

She is not planning to perform in the shows but will write the lyrics, the books and some of the music, a new pursuit for Gifford that began began after she left the daily television talk show "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee" to care for her ailing father in 2000. He died, and she set her sights on Broadway as a writer, not an actress.

"I started writing and found a joy in that, away from the camera, away from the spotlight," she said. Gifford appeared on Broadway in "Putting It Together" in 1999.

The second show, "Hurricane Aimee," is about Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and the third is set during World War II.