"Broadway: The American Musical" - PBS historical showcase begins 10/19/2004

Cafe Society
41

Um.

I’ll certainly conceed that Sondeheim is extremely important, but the Sonheimgasm they had in the last two hours was waaaaaaaay outta proportion. They spent, what, 3 minutes on a mega-flop that did nothing to advance Broadway musicals (Pacific Overtures ) and didn’t even mention Annie, one of the biggest blockbusters ever?! This is supposed to be an overview of Broadway history and (especially in the last two hours) they kept getting distracted from the “overview” concept which led to some huge, weird gaps. .

They completely missed out on the string of mega-hits that Stephen Schwartz had in the early '70s (Pippin, Godspell, The Magic Show). Hell, they spent all that time showing the “I < heart > NY” commercials (which were cool, granted), but why not show the first TV commercial for a Broadway musical ever–that Bob Fosse produced–for Pippin?

Chicago isn’t all that important to Broadway history, IMO (although it was nifty to see Gwen Verdon dancing some of it) despite the recent interest, but they didn’t even mention The Fantasticks? (yeah, it was off-Broadway, but they did all that “Cotton Club” stuff in the '20s and '30s segments and that’s even further off.

And the ending…I really like Wicked and all, but A) what, 12 minutes or so of reused stock footage that’s been repeated ad nauseum on TV before (That clip of “Popular” has been everywhere–couldn’t they have played the minute before or the minute after?) and B) um…where was everything else? Where was Urinetown? Thorougly Modern Millie, and Avenue Q which WON THE FRIGGIN’ Tony, just to name a few?

And in the '80s? Instead of all that Sondheimasturbation* about flops like Sunday In the Park With George and even brief mentions of uber-flops like Merrily We Roll Along, why not show Grand Hotel, or mention Once On This Island, or acknowledge the existance of City Of Angels to name three off the top of my head? Where was 1776, Grease, Promises, Promises and On The Twentieth Century in the '70s?

Rodgers and Hammerstein were simiarly overexposed in the '40s segment given the limited time and space.

And what was with the weird other focuses? Eubie Blake was a stunning composer–but he had so little to do with Broadway musicals that he’s not even listed in Ganzl’s exhaustive 1800 page Encyclopedia of the Musical Theater (I checked)–and yet they gave him more airtime than they did Frank Loesser (mentioned maybe twice by name) with 4 major musicals to under his belt? Or Ethel Waters (who I love–but not for her very limited work in musicals–she was in one or two reveues (which, hello? are not musicals, thanks) and Cabin In The Sky and maybe Porgy and Bess…and nothing else, IIRC) getting more focus than Mary Martin or Barbara Cook (not even mentioned) Gwen Verdon or Bernadette Peters (also not mentioned, despite the fact that she appeared in a couple of clips)? And how could they completely leave out Kurt Weill?

I understand that they had limited time but they could have cut some of the Cotton Club/Harlem stuff from the '30s–that would be a fascinating documentary on it’s own–but it’s not really about Broadway musicals, is it? Or cut all the stock footage about Vietnam and hippies…we don’t need to see stock footage of unwashed kids wallowing in their own filth and screaming incoherently to understand the context of Hair. Hell, that out-of-sequence “A Hymn To Saturday Evening” (The “Ed Sullivan” song from Bye-Bye Birdie was A) unnecessary and B) shown in the wrong decade (They showed it during the '50s segment and it came from the '60s segment**). Time was a factor, but their choices were poor, IMO.

If it were up to me, I would have picked 2 important shows per era and given each about 8 minutes. I would have picked maybe the two most important composers of the era and focused another 8 minutes on each. Then the remaining half hour I would have focused on the era and given as wide a range as possible, showing clips of a bunch of shows, painting with the broadest brush possible. And wouldn’t it have been fun to spend, maybe 15 minutes spread throughout the 6 hours touching on a few of the mega-flops like Carrie or Kelly or Got Tu Go Disco or Via Galactica?

Overall, the series was historically sloppy, weirdly focused, bizarrely paced and both too shallow and not encompassing enough.

Fenris, very disappointed, espeically in the last 2 hours.

*Yes, I understand how important Sondheim is, but he’s not everything (and for the last 15 years, Broadway has been running as far and fast from the “Depressing, incomprehensible, plotless musical with great music that sounds wonderful on disc” style that Sondheim/Prince prefer) and they devoted far too much of their limited time to him. I’d love to see a six hour “History of Stephen Sondheim’s Musicals” documentary. But this wasn’t that.

Had it been up to me, not counting his work as a lyricist, I would have devoted one of the longer segments to Company which really was as revolutionary as Okalahoma, and another entire segment to a quickie overview of the rest of Sondheim’s musicals. And that would have been it. Yes it would have given him short shrift, but it would also have allowed them to show the diversity of Broadway. When you only have 6 hours to show 10.5 decades, it’s dumb to devote 30-50 minutes (give or take) to any one composer, however good or important. Same with R&H. They ignored far to many good/important musicals in the 40’s-50’s to focus on R&H’s work. Either do an in-depth look at a composer or do an overview–trying to do both just doesn’t work, IMO.

**Plus, in a bit of historical ignorance, they screwed up: Bye Bye Birdie is NOT about Elvis as stated. Per Strouse (or Adams–I can’t remember which) Conrad Birdie=Conway Twitty.

42

Agreeing with (and adding to) what Fenris said, I’m banking Sondheim wouldn’t cooperating unless they suc—I mean, gave him a good deal of screentime.

I think the emphasis on certain black figures at the expense of some more-important non-black figures was just a matter of PBS P.C. Yes, Bert Williams was important, and Shuffle Along (but where was the great Florence Mills? Not even mentoned!) but I thought it odd that they kept talking about how Ethel Waters singing “Suppertime” in As Thousands Cheer “summed up the history of the black race,” but never mentioned it was written by a Jew who fled Russia in the late 19th century to escape the pogroms.

43

Oh, and did you notice the intrusive head-mikes on the performers in most of the post-1980 clips? Wussies. Doesn’t anyone know how to PROJECT anymore? Put a mike on Ethel Merman and she’d have blown out the back wall of the theater.

44

Agreed with you, Eve. I would have loved to see Pippin included. I guess I’ll have to settle for the Pippin concert next month.

I thought the RENT segment was wonderful. Missed seeing Urinetown and Avenue Q in the lineup.

45

First, the nitpicks. Isn’t the entire plot of Bye, Bye Birdie about the lead character saying bye bye to the fans before being drafted? Isn’t that the Elvis Presley story that everyone in the U.S. was talking about at the time? Isn’t the plot more important than a punning name?

And amplified rock bands are just plain louder than orchestras. I understand that the lyrics in Rent are somewhat important to the plot but I only heard about half of them in the production I saw.

But yes, episode 5 was odd and episode 6 was purely bizarre. It’s instructive to go over the lists of Tony-winning musicals and longest-running shows and see how many were literally never even named or referred to. And those in addition to the ones which got the barest passing mention. For literal Pete’s sakes, they had Peter Stone on as a talker and never once mentioned 1776! Jerry Orbach’s plays got more time and attention than Zero Mostel’s - despite them not bothering to mention that he was in the original cast of the Fantasticks.

Did Sondheim restructure the Broadway musical or kill it? Instructive again to have Gale MacDermot note that Broadway never followed up on Hair, and then move the scene over to the Sondheim apotheosization. I think you can argue that Sondheim was the snake swallowing its tale, er, tail. Once Broadway decided to cannibalize its past for its future instead of reaching out to the larger cultural community it was doomed to be whatever it is today. And no, I don’t think that plopping Billy Joel and Abba songs onto a stage twenty years after their heyday constitutes reaching out. And no, I’m not arguing that all musicals should have rock scores, just that isolation is creative death.

I don’t see how you could view episode 6 without coming away with the feeling that today’s Broadway is creatively bankrupt.

Isn’t it extraordinary that there weren’t any gays in the theater until after Rent?

46

Except Conway Twitty was drafted right out of high school. He was planning a career in baseball - not music - at the time.

47

That’s because Episode 6 presented a very skewed version of Broadway today.

48

Asked myself the same question, as the singing was very good. It looked like a kinescope film, and judging by the women’s hair styles, my best guess is that it was a television presentation of one or more numbers from the 1953 revival of Porgy and Bess. Helen Colbert opened in the role of Clara, but I can’t say whether that was her singing “Summertime” in the clip.

49

Has anyone bought – or is anyone going to buy – the DVD? Presumably there would be some detailed credits available with that.

50

The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive, which is part of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, consists of 2,445 Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theater productions videotaped during performance since 1970.

51

Exactly the observation the friend I watched part two with made (my contribution, which will send me directly to hell, was when the talking heads were going on about how with terminal cancer Oscar Hammerstein wrote a song about something that grows and grows, I commented “like cancer.” Yep, directly to hell.). I was so annoyed with the apparent inability to balance the musicians and performers at both the shows we saw on Broadway (Mamma Mia and Hairspray) and the same inability of the touring company of Mamma Mia. I even opened a thread about it way back when.

52

In my research, I came across Hammerstein’s doctor’s report, which read,

Metastasize, metastasize
That is your situation,
Big and mean, in your spleen,
You will need radiation.
Cancer, it tends to bloom and grow
Grow until you fade out
Metastasize, metastasize
Hope your will it is made out.

—Eve (who will see you in hell)

53

Eve, no place you are could ever be Hell.

54

Unless it’s the one in Michigan. :slight_smile:

55

You’re just kissing up so you’ll get invited to all the good parties in the Afterlife… :stuck_out_tongue:

56

I’d agree, but either Strouse or Adams in an interview I saw during the Tommy Tune revival of Birdie in the 90s (where they added a couple of songs–“I TooK A Giant Step” for one—which I personally would kill to see Tommy Tune perform, thanks) point-blank said it was Twitty. :: shrug :: Maybe they were misrembering.

And regarding Stone, I’m 90% certain that he also wrote City of Angels.

I loved MacDermot’s honesty.

Actually, I think it was the New York Times that killed Broadway. It started with their critic from the '60s (who most now agree was a total idiot) Clive Barnes who had an orgasm over Hair (i’ve got a copy of his review and it’s both wrong and stupid. Hair has many positive things going for it, but let’s be honest—it’s not “unassuming and unpretentious” (or words to that effect) It’s so full of overblown self-importance you could pop it like a balloon. Anyway, for about 10 years after that, Barnes savaged almost any musical that was “traditional” and gave blow-jobs to any musicals that were rock. Hell, Via Galactica–which lasted 7 performances and by all other accounts was far worse than Carrie: the Musical ever managed to get a luke-warm review out of Barnes. He kept insisting that Broadway imitate popular music rather than either lead it or be influenced by it.

And then, along came Frank Rich, who was deeply suspicious of anything that could possibly be considered “popular”, Rich is like those annoying Goth kids back when you were in school who didn’t really care what they liked as long as it wasn’t what everyone else liked.

And both Barnes and Rich adored Sondheim and loathed anything that didn’t sound like Sondheim.

It’s not Sondheim who killed musicals–there’s plenty of room for the brilliant musician who makes interesting flops that history later reconsiders or reworks—Kurt Weill certainly had a few, John LaTouche (“Golden Apple”) ditto. The problem was that there were people who were trying to force everyone else to BE Sondheim and force the public to like something they didn’t–Merrily We Roll Along comes right to mind. (To Rich’s credit, he admits that Merrily is an incomprehensible mess in his review–but still thinks you should kinda llike it anyway) Rich once said something about the intellectual bankruptcy of people who enjoyed going to a Lloyd-Webber spectacular and just ‘turning their minds off’–as though watching something purely for pleasure was somehow terribly wrong.

(As an aside, I did love the bit where Sondheim explained the bit about the music in Sweeney Todd with the little crescendos–why wasn’t there more stuff like that from more composers/artists? “I wrote this bit this way because…” or “I played that part that way so that…”. )

And one other “out of sequence” bit–why was Merrick dealt with in the '80’s segment? Merrick’s best stunts were in the '60s. And the one he pulled in *42nd Street wasn’t nearly as interesting as his '60’s and '70’s stunts (the reviews from the guys who had the same names as all the big critics was by far the best, IMO)
And as an aside, why didn’t they mention that June Havoc was the real-life “Baby June” of “Baby June and her Newsboys” from Gypsy? I mean–she was 1/3d of the inspiration for one of the best 5 musicals (IMO) of all time.

Fenris

57

And I won’t rule out the possiblity that I’m misremebering too–since come to think of it, it’s been like 15-20 years since I saw that interview.

58

The show has a website here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/index.html
they have a feedback link.
Anna Held is mentioned here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/ziegfeld_f.html

There may be other early people mentioned, I didn’t look too hard.

By the way, my sister has a “Anna Held Cigars 5 cents” sign (about 2ft x 6ft w/ gilt lettering) from my grandfather’s pharmacy

Brian

59

I did a little research. On June 10, 1951, the New York-based ABC series Showtime U.S.A. did a salute to the Theatre Guild by presenting excerpts from two its most famous productions, Porgy and Bess and Oklahoma!. The former was represented by two fully staged songs, including “Summertime” sung by Muriel Rahn.

60

Well researched! What an amazingly obscure source.

Muriel Rahn was the original Carmen Jones, discovered while reduced to working in a camera shop although she and her husband had been pioneers in developing the American Negro Theater and other troupes. She’s mentioned in various theater histories as a popular singer with an operatic style or an opera singer. A Google search brings up neither a reference to her and Summertime nor a record of hers, although an original cast recording of Carmen Jones exists.

Maybe I’ll get back to the Museum of Radio and Television some day…