Not long ago, I posted a video here of Theodore Bikel and Fyvush Finkel (from Picket Fences and Boston Public) recreating the “To Life” number from when they toured in Fiddler on the Roof many years earlier. After posting that, I did some more searching, and found this gem. It may seem like the same thing, but it’s very different. And wonderfully so. So, I offer it as a bonus. This is the two of them five years later (at which point Bikel was then 84 and Finkel was 86) at a gala event for the famed Yiddish Theatre Folksbienne in New York. This is the wonderful theater that recently did an all-Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof to great acclaim. (And did the first New York production of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical Harmony, before it transferred to Broadway.) In this video, Bikel and Finkel not only sing “To Life” again – but this time, they perform the entire scene (with dialogue), sort of in costume. But even more notable, they do it all --–in Yiddish! (Don't worry, there are subtitles.) It’s absolutely wonderful. As a reminder, this is the scene when the butcher Lazar Wolf is asking Tevye to marry his daughter -- and at first Tevye, a dairyman, thinks he's been invited there because Lazar Wolf wants to buy one of his milk cows.
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Finishing our trilogy of Theodore Bikel repeats, this is a piece I posted almost 10 years ago with Bikel and Fyvush Finkel (who most people know from Picket Fences and Boston Public) recreating the song "To Life" from when they toured in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. When Theo Met Fyvush After finding that video of Theodore Bikel which I posted the other day, with him re-creating his performance as Captain Von Trapp in the original production of The Sound of Music, I noticed another video that, in some ways, does the same thing for another show. Among his many performances, Bikel played Tevye in several road productions of Fiddler on the Roof. And again, like before, there's no video of those shows. But here in a concert from 2003, he not only sings one of the songs, but brings on stage a wonderful actor who co-starred with him in the show all those many decades ago, the joyous Fyvush Finkel, who you might recall from both Picket Fences and Boston Public. (And who got his start in the Yiddish Theater, a reality that still shows up through this video...) When they toured together in Fiddler on the Roof, Finkel played the role of Lazar Wolf, the butcher, who asks Teyve for his daugther Tzeitel's hand in marriage, which leads to the rousing production number, "To Life, L'Chaim." In this performance, Finkel is an exuberant 81 (and still alive at 92...), and Bikel here is 79 (still going on today at 90.) You might want to jump to the 36 second mark, since there's just blank leader at the beginning. By the way, I mentioned in reply to my earlier video that I had reason to meet Theodore Bikel once. He's good friends with a friend of mine, the writer-director Lynn Roth. We were all at a Writers Guild event so I went over to join them. It was a very personable conversation, and I remember bringing up that I had an earlier album of his, where he sang pop-rock songs with a folk interpretation (it's very good) -- and also seeing him on the Mike Douglas Show many years before. What was interesting and memorable about that TV appearance is he had mentioned that the then-current hit song, "Those Were the Days," sung by Mary Hopkin, was actually an old Russian folk song, which he had introduced into America many years earlier, and he performed the original Russian version on the show, which was wonderful. He was bowled over that I'd remembered that broadcast from such a long time earlier ("That was over 20 years ago!" he said) -- and that I had that obscure album) -- which helped make the rest of the conversation all the better. Later, Lynn called me up and said, "You have no idea how touched Theo was that you actually remembered that TV appearance and had his album." Here's more of him, with another great performer. (Note: there's about 35 second of black tape at the beginning.) From all his many years on the series Law & Order (and also movies, like Dirty Dancing and Crimes & Misdemeanors) I suspect that there is a generation of viewers (or two generations) who have no idea that Jerry Orbach was not only a huge Broadway musical star, but I believe was honored as starring in more performances on Broadway than any other actor or actress. He was in such shows as Chicago, Carnival, Promises Promises (for which he won the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical – and which I saw on Broadway), the revivals of 42nd Street and Guys and Dolls, and a couple of hugely long-running off-Broadway musicals, The Threepenny Opera, and perhaps most-famously The Fantasticks, for which he originated the role of ‘El Gallo’. Notably, in that show he introduced the song “Try to Remember.” There are a few videos of him singing “Try to Remember” years later on TV shows, but I decided to select this one. That’s because the pianist accompanying him is Harvey Schmidt – who wrote the music to it. (The lyrics are by Tom Jones. No, not the Welsh singer.) And then afterwards, the two sit down with host Robert Klein and have an interesting conversation about the show. (One note: when they refer to the “Rape Song,” it’s meant as the old usage of the word, and in the show references seduction.) By the way, many people who only know him for his acting likely don’t realize that he was the voice of ‘Lumiere’ the candlestick in the animated film Beauty and the Beast, and sang “Be Our Guest.” As it happens, I’m also biased because the good fellow went to the beloved Northwestern University – though he left senior year to go to New York. He did well there. A couple weeks ago, I mentioned coming across a video of the great folksinger/actor Theodore Bikel, which I said reminded me of a piece I had posted almost a decade ago, and I thought it was worth bringing back, and posted it here. Around that same time, almost 10 years ago, I actually had posted a couple other wonderful videos of the fellow, who I was lucky enough to meet once (which I wrote about in the above-linked article). Here's another of them, well-worth posting again. A Bit of Bikel As you may know -- or not -- in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music that starred Mary Martin, the role of Captain Von Trapp was played by Theodore Bikel. While there's a wonderful cast album, there's no video footage of that 1959 production. However, I just came across a video of of Theodore Bikel from four years ago singing "Edelweiss." It's not the same, but the next thing, 51 years later.. Nice, too, is that Bikel, who is a longtime folk singer, performed his own guitar solos in the Broadway production -- and of course does so here, making it even more of an effective re-creation. What's lovely about this, as well, is that halfway through he just naturally signals the audience to join in, which somewhat duplicates the moment in the film when the Captain gets the audience at the talent show to sing along with the family and build up support and emotion for his country, after having been told by the Nazis that he had to join the German Navy after this performance. By the way, a few years ago I heard an interview with Bikel and he spoke about The Sound of Music, and why the show was so meaningful for him. He was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1924 and said that he recalls as a young boy when a Nazi army paraded through town and saw Hitler ride by. It was long before Bikel was able to escape from the country. This is a second video from that Bell Telephone Hours tribute to Alan Jay Lerner for which I posted the On a Clear Day You Can See Forever segment here the other day. This is the song, “I Remember It Well,” from the movie Gigi, in a wonderful performance sung here by Stanley Holloway (who, of course, famously played 'Alfred P. Dolittle' in Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady) and the terrific Barbara Harris (from On a Clear Day...). It’s totally charming. I’m pretty sure I posted this a long while ago, but can’t find it. And it’s so wonderful, it deserves being posted again, so that it doesn’t slip through the cracks. It’s from the old “Bell Telephone Hour,” and I think they were doing a tribute to Alan Jay Lerner. The host is Cyril Ritchard (who of course famously played ‘Captain Hook” in Peter Pan opposite Mary Martin). The first video is a joyous 14-minutes selection of five songs from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever – with the original Broadway cast, Barbara Harris and John Cullum. He’s wonderful – though as good as he is (and he’s very good), she is utterly standout. Fantastic. All the songs are terrific, but (for me) best of all is that they use my three favorite songs from the score. The charming “Hurry, It’s Lovely Here,” “The S.S. Bernard Cohen” (I love the song, though in part for its silliness, tho also clever rhymes, but I’m surprised they included it -- it's very light and frothy -- but happy they did so), and the great “What Did I Have That I Don’t Have?” By the way, when watching this video, I saw another one I watched that was William Daniels (who was in the show talking about On a Clear Day… What I never knew was that Louis Jordan (notably in Lerner and Lowe’s Gigi, which came before this) was the original male lead. I think he’d have been great in the acting part, but don’t think he could have handled the songs even close to as well as Cullum. If I had to guess, that’s why they parted ways. Though I've also been told by someone who follows these things closely that Jourdan thought the show would be a two-person lead, and he saw that Barbara Harris was stealing the show and it was becoming hers. So, it could be a few reasons overlapping. Ah, what a time when they did a TV program like this. And devoted 14 minutes to just one show. |
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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