This past June marked the 62nd anniversary of the now-legendary television broadcast of Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett teaming up for a special at Carnegie Hall.  (I believe the 62nd anniversary is called the "Diamond Jubilee Double Bonus.)  This is a 10-minute excerpt that’s sublime and funny, as the two sing a tribute to the history of Broadway.

Here are two videos that are pretty fun, and a great touch of musical theater history.  They’re sort of companion videos.
 
The first is a segment from, I think, an old Dateline NBC that in their "This Week in History" segment showed a six-minute excerpt of documentary narrated by Mary Martin about when she took the musical Hello, Dolly! on tour -- here, to Japan in 1968.  And we see about 4-5 minutes from the production.  (Fun, too, is the very end when the TV show goes back to host Stone Phillips and brings in a historian to put the year in perspective. We get to see a bit of a young Michael Beschloss.)

We conclude of Labor Day Fest, with another little-known song about labor from a musical.  This one, though, isn’t from a Broadway musical, but rather one on the West End, and isn’t just little-known here, but almost unknown.  However, its source material may not be.
 
It’s the 2014 musical, Made in Dagenham, which is based on the 2010 movie of the same name.  The film, which was a dramatic comedy, had a very impressive cast – Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Rosamund Pike, Andrea Riseborough and Richard Schiff, among others.
 
The stage musical adaptation had a notable cast, as well, in its own well, starring Gemma Arterton, known for her movie roles in such films as Quantum of Solace, The King’s Man, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and Clash of the Titans, as well as the recent BBC-PBS mini-series, Funny Woman, and on stage in Saint Joan for the National Theatre.
 
The musical and film are based on the true story in 1968 of the first strike ever by women that started the British women’s labor movement.  It began when 187 women at the Ford auto plant of 55,000 men in Dagenham, England, learned that their work as sewing machinists making car seat covers had been downgraded to “unskilled,” and so their pay accordingly cut at the factory.  The women went on a small strike, but the strike gained support and grew, and further, without seats, the cars couldn’t be built, and the strike became a landmark moment in the labor relations.  In the end, it led to England’s Equal Pay Act of 1970. 
 
The musical got mixed, though generally positive reviews.  It didn't run long, but did play for six months.  The show has music by David Arnold, lyrics by Richard Thomas.  This is the number, “Everybody Out,” performed on a TV charity fundraising benefit for Children in Need.

(SIDE NOTE: One thing I like in the video is how at the end, when the hosts come on stage, they focus -- understandably -- on Gemma Arterton, but she keeps doing her best to draw in attention on the full company.)

Continuing our Labor Day Fest of little-known labor songs from Broadway musical, this is the song "7-1/2 Cents" from the movie version of the musical, The Pajama Game.  The Broadway show was a huge hit and had a very long run of 1,063 performances, around 2-1/2 years.  The score was by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, who also wrote a show that ran almost as long (1,019 performances) and has had a more memorable shelf-life, Damn Yankees.

The musical is based on the novel, 7-1/2 Cents, by Richard Bissell, who co-wrote the book of the musical with director George Abbott.  It's a romance about labor unrest at a pajama factory.

It all also plays a part in what I've long felt was the oddest credit of a musical, the show Say, Darling.  That show had a score by Betty Comden & Adolph Green and Jule Styne, and it had a respectable run of 332 performances.  It was based on a fictionalized novel of Richard Bissell's experiences adapting 7-1/2 Cents into The Pajama Game.  The Broadway adaptation of that was never officially called a musical, but rather "A Play About a Musical."  But to me, I've always thought that the actual credit is far better -- because it's really a play about a musical based on a book about a musical based on a musical based on a book.

Anyway, here are Doris Day, Jack Shaw and the company with "7-1/2 Cents" from The Pajama Game -- based on the novel 7-1/2 Cents.

In honor of Labor Day, I thought I post a few little-known songs about labor unionizing from musicals.  Actually, two of the shows are specifically about that, and all three songs, as it turns out, are about striking.

The first is from the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Fiorello!, by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, written about five years before they wrote Fiddler on the Roof.  It starred Tom Bosley in the early World War I days of Fiorello LaGuardia's career as a lawyer handling cases of the under-privileged, and then taking on the corrupt Tammany Hall machine to run for Congress and then Mayor.  Bosley won the Tony Award as (oddly) Best Supporting Actor in a Musical, because in those days, the Tonys had a rule whereby you could only qualify for "Best Actor" if your name was above the title or it said (under the title) "Starring..."  But for Fiorello!, it was an ensemble cast, Bosley wasn't well-known, and the main actors were all listed together well-below the title.

​In this scene, LaGuardia is called to help a group of women shirtwaist strikers whose leader has been arrested.  He realizes the women are far out of their depth, which leads to the song "Unfair."