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The Best Featured Musical Actors That the Tonys Missed

pfilichia — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:52:42 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Here’s the second of five columns dealing with notable omissions in Tony categories.

Last week, I took a look at the women who weren’t nominated for the Best Featured Musical Actress Tony Award for certain performances – and arguably should have been.

Now, submitted for your approval, are those men who weren’t cited as possibilities for the Best Featured Musical Actor Tony Award – and certainly had a case to be nominated.

Coming to these conclusions isn’t always the result of seeing the performers live, on tape, DVD or YouTube. Often, our most convincing evidence is what we hear on the cast albums.

Based on those, you decide, too: should any, some or all have been chosen, either in lieu of or in addition to somebody else?

In alphabetical order:

Jason Alexander (Merrily We Roll Along: 1981-1982).

The Best Featured Musical Actresses That the Tonys Missed

pfilichia — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:51:11 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Been busy the last week? Of course you have, with all the e-mailing, texting and – last and now least – phoning you’ve done to many friends and relatives.

The subject: the 2011-2012 Tony nominations.

As in the past (and as will be in the future), you and yours have agreed with many of the nods, and have criticized some, too.

Sample dialogue: “I can’t believe they chose [fill in name]!”

“They should have gone for [fill in name]!”

“[So-and-so] wuz robbed!”

Well, sometimes we Tony-critics have a point. So what I’ll do during this Tony season is cite some of the people and musicals that, in kinder, gentler seasons – or with different nominating committees calling shots and picking names – would have been nominated.

May You Have a Musical Theater May

pfilichia — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:19:06 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Tra-la! It’s May! The lusty month, as Queen Guenevere once taught us in Camelot. When the last day of April concludes, many of us find this marvelous musical theater song coursing through our brains.

Perhaps bookwriter-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner was giving us a subtle hint here of what was to come in the queen’s life. For although Guenevere was very much married, she did have lust on her mind long before she saw Lancelot du Lac breathe life into an apparently deceased knight.

But it’s not the only song in Camelot that has May in its title – although the other one uses it in a very different context: “Then You May Take Me to the Fair.”

The Loos Woman Who Observed That Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

pfilichia — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:22:28 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

She wrote a play called Happy Birthday, so why shouldn’t we wish her one?

Granted, Anita Loos, born April 26, 1888, is no longer with us. For that matter, Happy Birthday isn’t, either. But it was obviously a good enough comedy for Rodgers and Hammerstein. In their producing career, they were only impressed enough with three plays to bring them to Broadway – and Happy Birthday was one of them. The 1946 hit ran 563 performances -- just as many as The Glass Menagerie.

But Loos is more famous for creating an iconic heroine who eventually wended her way into musical theater history.

She is, of course, Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

We’ll soon have a chance to see both at Encores! in the concert presentation from May 9-13. Until then (and after, for that matter) we have the 1949 original cast album that captured Carol Channing in her first starring role.

A Chat with Florence Henderson

pfilichia — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:50:58 +0000

By Peter Filichia –

Florence Henderson may be known as Carol Brady to millions upon millions, but to those of us who follow Broadway, she’ll always be the leading lady of four musicals that she did in New York from 1952 through 1964.

Lately, Henderson has been touring the country in Florence Henderson: All the Lives of Me, her one-woman show. Just before she came to the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton last week, I got a chance to chat with her.

Peter Filichia: So how did it all start for you?

Florence Henderson: Music was my salvation. I was the youngest of 10 children.

PF: Ten!?!

FH: Yes, the tenth child born to a dirt farmer and his wife in Dale, Indiana. It didn’t make for a promising future.

PF: Traditionally, when parents have that many children, by the time they get to the youngest, they're out of gas.

Julie and Carol: So Nice, They Did It Twice

pfilichia — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 04:05:15 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Julie Andrews played Maria von Trapp on stage two years before she started filming The Sound of Music.

Well, at least in a manner of speaking. Andrews actually portrayed a parody version of the would-be nun who became a wife and multiple mother. She was Mama Pratt in the sequence “The Pratt Family Singers” in Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall. It’s the TV special that was taped on March 5, 1962 prior to a June 11 broadcast.

In one of the great show business ironies of all time, Andrews could have had no idea that she would be mocking her most famous future role when she pretended to be the mother of no fewer than twenty children. We learn that their favorite things include “goose fat and duck fat and ham fat and lard.” Andrews chirpily delivers the line as if she were singing about twenty-four karat gold.

Liza in Her Prime

pfilichia — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:13:26 +0000

By Peter Filichia –-

Liza Minnelli certainly started off 1974 with a bang.

Not that 1973 was so bad. On March 27 of that year, Minnelli became the youngest performer to have won a Best Actress in a Musical Tony (for Flora the Red Menace in 1965) and then an Oscar for Leading Actress in a film (for Cabaret).

Granted, Judy Holliday and Vivien Leigh had won both prizes too – albeit the other way around, with the Oscar coming first. Still, Holliday was thirty-five when she accomplished the double-dip, and Leigh forty-nine. Minnelli was merely fifteen days past her twenty-seventh birthday.

And if that weren’t enough to make the first quarter of 1973 memorable for the star, fewer than two months later, Minnelli received an Emmy for Liza with a “Z”: A Concert for Television.

Wholesale Is More Than Just Barbra Streisand

pfilichia — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:28:45 +0000

By Peter Filichia –

So it was 50 years ago last week that Barbra Streisand made her first dynamic splash – when she opened on March 22, 1962 in I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

In Jerome Weidman and Harold Rome’s look at the garment trade in the 1930s, Streisand’s Yetta Tessye Marmelstein was greatly heralded. That was mostly thanks to her show-stopping semi-eponymous song “Miss Marmelstein.” It’s a complaint from a workaday drudge who feels unappreciated both professionally and romantically.

Part of the fun of the song is that many of us can relate to her outlook. That Rome offered amusing lyrics certainly helped. (“Pardon the big words I apply, but I was an English major at CCNY.”) But Streisand’s full-out, unapologetically down-to-earth, let’s-face-the-facts performance put it over. It’s a rare musical theater enthusiast who doesn’t know it -- and an even rarer one who doesn’t love it.

All American: Once upon a Time, 50 Years Ago

pfilichia — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 04:45:52 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Broadway overtures certainly let you know early on what The Expected Hit Ballad will be. Usually, after a rousing fanfare that previews The Most Stirring Songs, everything calms down so that we can hear The Most Beautiful Song.

It happens in the famed overture to Gypsy. “Small World,” which indeed turned out to its biggest ballad hit, gets more than a half-minute of the overture. “Make the Man Love Me,” the not-quite-hit from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is allotted more than a minute. And lest anyone be confused that the title song of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was supposed to be its Big Hit, the song is not only given a startling 1:20 of the overture, but a chorus is brought in to sing it, too.

Once: Just in Time for St. Patrick's Day

pfilichia — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:48:57 +0000

By Peter Filichia –

When the members of the Oscar committee first met in 2008 to discuss possible Best Song nominations for the 2007 film year, many felt that “Falling Slowly” from Once should not be nominated. After all, hadn’t it been heard in coffee houses and appeared on two albums long before the film was made?

Well, yes. “Falling Slowly” was written in 2002 – five years before the film debuted (and won many moviegoers’ hearts).

But the Oscar powers-that-be eventually took a more salient fact into consideration: “Falling Slowly” was indeed written for the film. Was it songwriters Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s fault that the Irish Film Board was strapped by some red tape and that the movie’s producers took years to raise the money? (And we’re only talking about $160,000!) Because Hansard and Irglová had performed the song here and there long before the financial backing was in place, should their lovely song be deemed ineligible?

Merrick Memories

pfilichia — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 05:01:00 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Hundreds of record albums have been dedicated to Broadway musicals. Thousands have been sung by Broadway performers. But until October 1, 1964, there had never been a record album that had celebrated a Broadway producer.

On that date, however, RCA Victor released David Merrick Presents Hits from His Broadway Hits. Now it’s back in print, thanks to Masterworks Broadway.

The color of the cover is still, of course, what came to be known on Broadway as trademark “David Merrick Red.” Both his first hit -- Fanny in 1954 – and his final smash – 42nd Street – had this fire-engine, eye-catching color dominating its artwork.

A Leap Year's Look at Broadway Albums

pfilichia — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:16:51 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

This week, when February 29 comes into our lives, we’re most aware that we’re in a Leap Year. So let’s have a Leap Year’s look at cast albums.

We must start in 1944, because American original cast albums, for all intents and purposes, didn’t come into existence until 1943. But that still gives us 18 years to examine in this brief history.

1944 – On the Town, our first entry, isn’t quite an original cast album, and it wasn’t made until another Leap Year: 1960. John Reardon, who that same year was featured in Do Re Mi, sang the role of wistful sailor Gabey that had been originally played by John Battles.

The First Hit Broadway Musical from a Movie

pfilichia — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:53:56 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

These days, we often hear people complain that too many Broadway musicals are made from motion pictures. Actually, the start of that trend can be traced backed to 1953, when musical versions of Nothing Sacred and Carnival in Flanders debuted.

The former, renamed Hazel Flagg, was not a hit, but it did spawn a nice cast album full of sparkling Jule Styne melodies. The latter, however, was such a bomb that Walter Kerr was still smarting from it two-and-a-half years later. In his My Fair Lady review on March 16, 1956, Kerr stated that after hearing the first five terrific songs of the Lerner-Loewe show that he was greatly optimistic about its prospects. Then came “The Rain in Spain,” which prompted Kerr to write, “After that, you couldn’t have stopped My Fair Lady if you’d invited the authors of Buttrio Square, Hit the Trail and Carnival in Flanders to work over the second act.”

My Funny Valentine’s Day Song

pfilichia — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:59:57 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Many of us spent last week looking for the perfect Valentine’s Day cards to give to our beloveds.

Some of us bought cards with puffy embossed hearts in the middle. Inside were such sentiments as “To my love, to whom I give my heart and soul” or “You make every day, and not just Valentine’s Day, worth living.”

Others chose Valentines that stressed the humorous side of love. “You’re the man my mother warned me about – and I’m so glad that I found you” or “Honey, I hope you know that all your hard work has not gone unnoticed; I’ve been watching you from the couch during commercials.”

So while I could detail all the lush and romantic songs that you could play during Valentine’s Day – and Lord knows that musical theater offers a peck of them – I’m going to concentrate on my funny Valentine’s Day favorite.

It's the Little Things, the Little Things ...

pfilichia — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:47:30 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

I received a nice e-mail from Elliot J. Cohen, who’d read my “A Tale of Three Dollys” a few weeks ago. In it, I wondered why Carol Channing on the original Broadway cast album of Hello, Dolly! sings, “Ambrose, let me hear that tonic chord" in “Put on Your Sunday Clothes"– but that Mary Martin and Pearl Bailey on subsequent recordings sing “We haven't missed the train, thank the Lord!"

“It happened for one reason and one reason only,” wrote Cohen. “The first line referred to the plan for Ermengarde and Ambrose to get jobs at the Harmonia Gardens -- she dancing in the floor show and he as a singer -- and to show her Uncle Horace that they meant business about getting married and earning their own way in the world.

Black (Musical Theater) History Month

pfilichia — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:53:08 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

February is, of course, Black History Month. So celebrate each day by playing an African-American’s performance from different cast albums.

We have plenty to choose from. Black entertainers have been important components in the Broadway musical, as cast albums dating back to Show Boat’s 1946 revival prove.

In case you need suggestions on what to play on each day, I have a few:

Feb. 1: Play “Getting Ready Rag” from the Ragtime concept album so that you can be getting ready for all these songs you’ll play. Any excuse to hear Brian Stokes Mitchell sing is worth it.

Feb. 2: Now play “Getting Ready Rag” from the Ragtime original cast album. Yes, it’s the same song, so why repeat it? Because it’s Groundhog Day.

A Superb Thurber Carnival

pfilichia — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:31:46 +0000

By Peter Filichia –

A Thurber Carnival, the original cast album that Masterworks Broadway is re-issuing this week, could just as easily be called A Character Actors’ Carnival.

If you’re a vintage stage, movie or TV buff, you’ll immediately recognize the distinctively dry voices of Tom Ewell, Peggy Cass, Paul Ford, Alice Ghostley and John McGiver. None was a beautiful, glamorous, radiant, ravishing movie star, but, oh, those voices! Hear and savor them now on a crisp, clear recording of this 1960 revue that centered on the short stories and light prose of James Thurber (1894-1961).

The nation came to know Ewell’s workaday voice from The Seven Year Itch. He’d done it on Broadway in 1952, won a Tony and then repeated his role as a frustrated husband in the 1955 Hollywood version (not with original caster Vanessa Brown, of course, but with Marilyn Monroe).

A Tale of Three Dollys

pfilichia — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:40:43 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

Dolly Gallagher Levi has certainly kept her promise. For nearly half a century, she’s been telling us that “Dolly’ll never go away again”-- and she hasn’t, not since Hello, Dolly! started its pre-Broadway tryout at the Fisher Theater in Detroit in November, 1963.

This week marks the 48th anniversary of Dolly’s saying “Hello!” to Broadway, en route to romping to first place in the long-run musical list: 2,844 performances. But recording-wise, Jerry Herman’s score marked another first. Never before during a musical’s run did Americans have the chance to buy three separate recordings of a musical: the original cast with Carol Channing, the London cast with Mary Martin and a replacement cast with Pearl Bailey.

Say Gwen

MWB Elisa — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:54:07 +0000

By Peter Filichia --

This month’s Friday the 13th can be considered both lucky and unlucky for Broadway. It would have marked the 87th birthday of Gwen Verdon, and we’re all pretty sad that we don’t have the lady around to celebrate both her and her achievements. But, oh, aren’t we lucky that her parents gave birth to her on this date in 1925 in Culver City, California?

Alas, Verdon, who appeared in seven Broadway musicals -- and got six Tony nominations and four awards for her troubles – died at 75 in 2000. But since 1993, when I interviewed the star, I’ve reserved a day in early January to re-listen to the cassette tape (yeah, cassette tape!) I made that heavenly May day.

Here are some excerpts I’d like to share with you.

And the Year Starts Up

pfilichia — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:35:37 +0000

By Peter Filichia –

So what was the first recording in 2012 that you chose for your listening pleasure?

For the twentieth straight year, I started New Year’s Day by playing the CD that I got in late 1991: And the World Goes ‘Round. It’s the recording of the revue that celebrates John Kander and Fred Ebb’s first quarter-century on Broadway.

Why choose this for January 1? Well, the world has indeed gone ‘round and endured another spin, so giving this CD a spin seems apt.