The Tony Award-winning actor is divorcing his wife of 51 years — after spending 36 years illegally married to another woman, The Post has learned. Vereen wasn’t aware he was still married to his first wife at the time, sources said.
“This story is so bizarre — you can’t make this stuff up,’’ said Harold Mayerson, the lawyer for Vereen’s first, and still current, wife, Andrea. “Perhaps, Mr. Vereen will see another movie opportunity here.”
The “Pippin’’ star had married Andrea in Cecil County, Md., in February 1965, according to court papers He was 19 and she was 14 — and pregnant.
Vereen, 69, claims that he filed for divorce in New York in 1972, after seven years of marriage, and moved to LA thinking that the marriage was officially dissolved, sources said.
“They both filed for divorce proceedings in the early ’70s,” a source close to Vereen told The Post, saying he filed in 1972 and she submitted papers in 1974.
“There were no electronic records at that time, and there was no Internet. They both assumed that this was behind them.”
Vereen — who won best actor in a musical at the Tonys in 1973 for ‘Pippin’ and who played Chicken George in the TV miniseries “Roots” — then married Nancy Bruner in 1976. Court papers show he filed to split from her in 2012.
But Andrea Vereen says she never filed for divorce and was never served any papers after he walked on her and their kid, according to sources.
Still, she figured they were officially split after he left, sources said.
Andrea, a Pentecostal minister, learned they were still officially man and wife only when she went to file for Social Security at age 65 in Brooklyn in January and listed herself as divorced — but was told there was no proof of that, sources said. She phoned Vereen, who immediately filed for divorce, sources said.
The estranged couple arrived at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Thursday, avoiding one another by standing at opposite ends of a long hallway.
Andrea is seeking alimony and “equitable’’ property distribution, as well as lawyers’ fees.
While she arrived with her niece and other friends for support, the actor-dancer, who flew in from California, showed with his agent, Pamela Cooper. Andrea and Vereen declined comment.
Vereen’s lawyer, John DiMascio, said, “This is a personal matter.”