A week ago, I posted several videos about the great Broadway composer Jule Styne. I came across one more after that – but it’s as much a wonderful video to celebrate Angela Lansbury with, after her passing three weeks ago just shy of her 97th birthday. It’s a 12-1/2 minute montage of footage from her 1974 Broadway performance in Gypsy, which had a score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. The footage is taken from the audience, of course, but the quality for such things is totally watchable – and parts are almost excellent. A few comments about the material. Early on, she sings the song, “Some People,” where at one point she asks her father for $88 to help her act for her children. Knowing how much she scams people, including himself, he says he wouldn’t even give her 88-cents. When the original cast album was made in 1959 with Ethel Merman, the actor playing the father wasn’t available for the recording session. (Or perhaps no one thought of asking him to be there, since it’s his only line, and it’s spoken.) Realizing that they needed someone quickly, the show’s young, 29-year-old lyricist filled in, playing gruff and old. So, if you have the cast album, yes, that’s Stephen Sondheim. Later, in the song, “Together, Wherever We Go,” there’s a wonderfully whimsical line, “And any IOU I owe, you owe. / Who, me owe? / No, you owe / No, we owe. Together.” Sondheim has said that the line is an homage to his mentor Oscar Hammerstein, and the line Hammerstein wrote for the title song of Oklahoma! – And when we say Yeeow! Ay-yip-io-eeay! ...Oklahoma, O.K. -- L-A-H-O-M-A. Oklahoma! But finally, and most importantly, this has the only footage I’ve yet been able to find about her famous interpretation of the big, renown “11 o’clock” number – “Rose’s Turn,” which comes along at the 9:20 mark. This is the character having a breakdown when everyone in her life, and now her daughter, have left her, who she’s unrelentingly pushed to be a star, when what she’s actually wanted all along was to be the star herself. Her performance of “Rose’s Turn” was incredibly gutsy. That’s because after the song finished, as the audience cheered, she bowed and bowed...and bowed, and it almost got to the point of mugging, as the applause continued. Until after the applause finally ended – but she kept bowing. And bowing, in a now-silent theater. And that’s when the audience realized that she Angela Lansbury hadn’t been bowing to their applause, but that as Rose she was bowing and bowing and bowing to her imagined applause. It risked looking utterly foolish, but from all accounts, it was galvanizing. This video unfortunately doesn’t have the full performance and all the bowing, cutting off a bit early, but it has a lot of her bowing and bowing and looking high up into balcony, though the video stops just as the applause ends – where the bowing still went for a while longer. (At which point the audience got it). But especially seeing the expression on her face, you’ll get the point, that she’s playing Rose as she’s deeeeeeply bowing and bowing. It’s absolutely fascinating. I’ll keep trying to track down the full end of the number, but for now, this (as much of it there is) is a wonderful record to have.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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