DVDs: Documenting the Glory Days
What with the PBS miniseries Broadway: The American Musical, the theatrical film and now DVD documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, the two volumes of Broadway's Lost Treasures, and books like Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time, it's been a particularly fertile period for documentation of past theatrical glories.
Produced, directed, written, and edited by Rick McKay, Broadway: The Golden Age examines the great period from the '40s to the '60s through interviews with about 100 people who were a part of it. Bolstering these eyewitness accounts is a wealth of footage from newsreels, home movies, Tony Awards, "The Ed Sullivan Show" a different John Raitt Carousel "Soliloquy" from the one included on Broadway: The American Musical, and TV specials "The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe". The rarest clips included here seem to come from an early attempt at pay TV that hosted scenes from the original Broadway productions of Bus Stop and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Broadway: The Golden Age delves into whether or not there really was a golden age, what it was like to be there, and what happened to it. The film is organized by topics or themes, each dealt with by a multitude of talking heads. The participants share their first, unforgettable theatre experiences. They discuss arriving in New York for the first time, and attempting to survive there. They recall the sense of community, the importance of the tryout and touring, and after-theatre night life at Sardi's and Downey's. Held up as particular sources of inspiration by a great many are three actors, Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie, Kim Stanley, and Marlon Brando.
Each viewer of Broadway: The Golden Age will have his or her favorite moments. There's Shirley MacLaine, Janis Paige, John Raitt, and Hal Prince, all recalling the night MacLaine first went on for Carol Haney in The Pajama Game. The firing of Lainie Kazan from Seesaw and her replacement by Michele Lee are discussed by best friends Kazan and Lee. Gwen Verdon reveals some of Bob Fosse's directorial secrets. Prince, Chita Rivera, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Carol Lawrence talk about the making of West Side Story.
We see Walter Kerr composing his review of How to Succeed..., then its being read by Robert Morse at Sardi's on opening night. Angela Lansbury, Jerry Herman, Bea Arthur, and Don Pippin repeat the story of how Lansbury snared the title role in Mame. Perhaps my favorite segment: Gretchen Wyler a wonderful performer who could easily have been left out of the film on the need for an understudy to be prepared, illustrating this with the tale of how she got to take over a leading role during the tryout of Silk Stockings.
If you're like me, you may find yourself pushing the pause or backward search buttons on your remote control just to drink in the all-too-brief shots of the Broadway area in the '50s and '60s. I particularly loved the sight of a favorite childhood record shop, Gaiety, on Broadway between the old Astor and Victoria movie theatres between 45th and 46th Streets, where I purchased any number of '60s cast albums the day they were released.
While McKay missed out on talking to Ethel Merman or Mary Martin, he did secure Verdon, Lansbury, Carol Channing, Barbara Cook, and Elaine Stritch, plus lesser names like Wyler and Patricia Morison. Because the film took about six years to make, it includes a number of interview subjects who are now deceased Verdon, Uta Hagen, Al Hirschfeld, Adolph Green, Ann Miller, Hume Cronyn, Kim Hunter.
Even with its numerous theatrical engagements, Broadway: The Golden Age will have its greatest life on DVD, where it will stand as a touching record of a special period. True, a number of the anecdotes related are familiar, and the film's 110-minute length means that it is inevitably somewhat superficial. But for those with even a passing interest in the heyday of Broadway, much of this film will be irresistible. I could easily have watched another hour or two.
And the DVD comes complete with a number of bonus items. We go to the New York and Hollywood premieres of the documentary, at which many of the interview subjects made appearances. Verdon with the assistance of Fosse is seen performing "Whatever Lola Wants" in 1962 on the "American Musical Theatre" TV program; only glimpsed in the documentary, it's included complete as a bonus.
There are deleted scenes with Marian Seldes and June Havoc as well as a deleted segment on inspiration from older artists. Then there's an eighteen-minute alternate ending, considerably more downbeat than the one that now ends the film. It features numerous post-golden-age subjects of the younger generation, including Amanda Plummer, Cherry Jones who thinks Plummer is our greatest contemporary actress, Audra McDonald, Mary Testa, Betty Buckley, Douglas Sills, and Alan Cumming.
As a final bonus, we get a preview of McKay's forthcoming sequel documentary, Broadway: The Next Generation, in the form of a half-hour of raw interview footage, featuring all of the names just above, plus George C. Wolfe who recalls the effect of seeing West Side Story at Lincoln Center in '68, Cameron Mackintosh, Patti LuPone who strongly disagrees with Mackintosh about miking, Joanna Gleason, Ruthie Henshall, John Barrowman, Karen Ziemba, Cady Huffman, Matthew Morrison, Michael John LaChiusa, and Marissa Jaret Winokur.
And we must also note that Broadway: The Golden Age comes complete with a track of full-length audio commentary by McKay. Here, McKay reveals a good deal of behind-the-scenes information. He notes that PBS passed on the project, maintaining that no one would be interested in a film featuring 100 old people. He reveals that Shirley MacLaine and Michele Lee insisted on lighting their own segments. McKay admits he was turned down by Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and Liza Minnelli. Angela Lansbury turned him down four times before agreeing to her interview, and Sondheim was also difficult to convince. Kim Stanley died two weeks before her scheduled interview.
The best news revealed in the audio commentary is that there will be more than one sequel: In addition to Broadway: The Next Generation, there will be a Broadway: The Golden Age II. So it looks like I will get to see that additional hour or two of footage.