Last night we finished the Second Elisberg Industries International Film Festival, where the little-known award-winning musical Fiorello! was presented over the course of 14 episodes. It occurred to me that some people may have come in during the fest and missed some of the earlier part, or skipped a few and wanted to catch up -- so here's a list of all the episodes with links to them.
Fiorello! opened in 1959 and ran almost two years, for 795 performances. It was the co-winner for Best Musical with The Sound of Music at the Tony Awards, and also became only the third musical (at the time) to receive the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The score was by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, who five years later would write Fiddler on the Roof. Its then-little known star, Tom Bosley, won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He would later go on to fame playing 'Howard Cunnighman, the father on Happy Days. (The Tonys had a quirk in its nominating process whereby you were only eligible to be nominated as lead actor if your name was above the title in the billing, or listed as "starring." In the case of Fiorello! -- like many other ensemble shows -- the entire cast was listed together under the title, so even though Bosley was the lead and played the title character, he wasn't eligible to be nominated as lead actor.) Anyway, for the record, here are all the episodes posted on these pages for the festival -- http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-1 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-2 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-3 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-four http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-five http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-six http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-seven http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-eight http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-9 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-10 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-11 http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-12-the-finale http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-13-curtain-call http://www.elisbergindustries.com/blog/the-names-laguardia-part-14-encore
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This new 3rd and Fairfax podcast from the Writers Guild of America begins with a short, but very blunt personal message from WGAW President Howard Rodman about the recent presidential election. After than, the guest writer is Alex Cunningham, the co-creator/showrunner of the new Hulu series Chance, that stars Hugh Laurie. Her other credits include the series Aquarius, Bates Motel, and Desperate Housewives. She is interviewed by Aaron Fullerton, whose writing credits include the TV series American Gothic and Graceland.
And so, we've come to the end. The theater was dark on the holiday, but we're back with the final episode of the Second Elisberg Industry Film Festival presentation of Fiorello!. Think of it as the Encore. I figured that a good way to go out would be with a few off-beat but very appropriate videos. Bear with me, there are a few treats here, especially for your history buffs.. Hey, you've made it this far -- stick around to the finish. We'll start off with a song that I didn't post during the main part of the Film Festival, that's because there was no in-production performance video of it, a number called "The Bum Won." And there isn't such video still, but this here includes a lot of photos from the show. The song comes after party boss Ben Marino and his political cronies have agreed to let Fiorello LaGuardia run for Congress as a sacrificial lamb against the criminal Tammany Hall organization, with no chance of winning -- and yet to their utter shock the next morning when the results are in, he gets elected. This is one of my favorite songs in the show for the reason that I love songs with counterpoint...and this is counterpoint on steroids, with musical themes overlapping on musical themes overlappoing on even more themes. So, here from the original Broadway album is Howard Da Silva and the cast. Next, we have a featurette done for the 2013 Encores! concert-production of Fiorello! There's no music in the video, just largely actors and others talking about their roles and the show. But it's noteworthy because it includes the only surviving member of the creative team, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, talking about the show, in particular writing the new number, the reprise of "The Name's LaGuardia." And finally, two unlikely videos that have absolutely nothing directly to do with the production of musical, but everything to do with the musical. For the past two weeks, we've posting videos about a musical on Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York CIty for 12 years. Well, here is newsreel footage of LaGuardia himself. In this first video, it touches on one of the most remembered and beloved parts of his legacy -- something touched on in the musical at the very beginning of the show, which is in essence a flashback. During his term in office, there was a big newspaper strike in the city. And the news aside, one of the consternations it caused was that little children couldn't get their daily comic strips. So, Mayor LaGuardia would go on the air...and read the comics he was able to get access to. Here he is reading from "Dick Tracy" in 1945 -- and one of the fun things, which again they touch on in the musical, is how not only does he read the comics, but every once in a while tosses in little political commentaries that relate to them. And at least, we come to newsreel footage of Fiorello LaGuardia doing what is, in essence, the foundation that pushed his career forward -- going on the air in 1933 and angrily (and bluntly) railing against the criminal activities of the Tammany Hall organization, still then impacting the city. It's the best way, I suppose, of finishing things here. After all, the name's LaGuardia. As always, when it comes time to post my The Writers Workbench column, I link to it on the Writers Guild of America site, for whom it's originally written. That's because it has videos and links embedding, and it's so much easier to link and re-code everything myself.
This month, the column is a bit different. It only looks at one product, a glasses-free 3D tablet, and a review of a glasses-free 3D featureette about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater House. I've written about glasses-free 3D in the past, mostly related to a company called Stream TV Networks and their technology Ultra-D. But this is a different company and technology. It has many good things about it, and a few lapses, more on the tablet end. But all in all, pretty interesting. You can read it all here. I don't want to let Thanksgiving pass without including Stan Freberg's take on the holiday from his classic album, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America: Volume 1 -- The Early Years.. To start with, here's his song about where the idea for Thanksgiving came from, "Take an Indian to Lunch this Week." And once the holiday event was decided upon, things didn't go as smoothly as plans would hope. I like to post little-known holiday songs from musicals, and we have today for Thanksgiving. This is from the musical The Good Old, Bad Old Days by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, who had a lot of success with their earlier shows Stop the World, I Want to Get Off and Roar of the Greaspaint, Smell of the Crowd -- and also wrote the score to the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But this show never left London nor made it to Broadway.
There are several nice songs in the show, though. And this is a very sweet, and appropriately-titled, "Thanksgiving Day." |
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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