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.
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For the Holiday Music Fest tonight, we have a lovely song that most definitely is largely unknown for a very good reason. It was cut from the film and has been lost for over 20 years. The song is "When Love is Gone," for The Muppet Christmas Carol. It was sung by Meredith Braun, who was appearing in Les Miserables in London at the time, and... Michael Caine. Yes, Michael Caine. She plays Scrooge's lost love Belle, and Caine as Scrooge comes upon her with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Director Brian Henson loved the song, as did the songwriters Paul Goodman and Miles Goodman -- as well as Caine. The issue was that executive Jeffrey Katzenberg thought that test screenings were showing that kids in the audience were getting antsy by the mature ballad. He didn't require Henson to cut it, but made a strong case, and so Henson reluctantly agreed. And so, the song was dropped from the 1992 film. Because of his love of the song, director Henson put it back in for the 2002 VHS release. But it's that pesky "VHS" that caused the next problem. Because when DVDs came along, the negative for the song was lost, and so it couldn't be added into the new DVD release. And so hasn't been seen since. Every six months or so, Henson said that he'd ask about the footage and even put together a task force of sorts to find it, but with no luck. The film was recently being remastered for re-release in 4K. And Henson showed up for a screening. It turns out that the technicians hid something from him. As he told BBC News, "I went down and they said, ‘But before we show it to you, we’ve got something else we want to show you.’ And they put up reel four of Christmas Carol with ‘When Love Is Gone,’” I was like, ‘No, you did not!’ and they said, ‘Yes we did! We found it!’ I was so happy, I was so happy.” The scene is also included in the "full extended cut" option in the Extras section for the movie on Disney Plus. And so finally, after 21 years since the VHS release -- and 31 years since the feature film was show in theaters -- "When Love is Gone" will be back in the movie. Here is the scene and song. This morning for the Holiday Music Fest, we have a sort of Unknown Harnick Festival with three Christmas songs by Sheldon Harnick that you've almost-certainly never heard. In the case of this first song, that's because it's for a musical that never made it to Broadway. The song is a particular sweet number called "One Family," and it's from a show that Harnick wrote based on none other than...A Christmas Carol. Harnick is best-known for his work with composer Jerry Bock on such musicals as Fiddler on the Roof, She Loves Me and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fiorello! For this, though, he collaborated on the show with famed movie composer, Michel Legrand, who among many film scores wrote The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, as well as the original film version of The Thomas Crown Affair, for which he won an Oscar for the Best Song, "The Windmills of Your Mind." Though their production of A Christmas Carol never was produced on Broadway, it's had a bit of a life in community theater. This number is sung in the show by the Cratchit Family, and it's performed here by Sheldon Harnick, along with his wife Margery Gray (who had a successful Broadway career, including the show Mr. Wonderful that starred Sammy Davis Jr., and oddly enough had music by Jerry Bock before he teamed up with Harnick), and Leigh Beery, who starred as Roxanna opposite Christopher Plummer in Cyrano, a musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. (She comes in with her main solo at the 1-minute mark. Margery Gray follows her.) This (and the two that follow) come from the wonderful CD I've posted several selections from. Sheldon Harnick: Hidden Treasures, which you can find here. These next two Christmas songs were written by Harnick and Bock for their musical She Loves Me (which is based on the Hungarian play that the movies Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail are adapted from). However, they're so little-known that people who even love She Loves Me inside-out likely don't even know them. That's because they were cut from the show. The first song, "Christmas Eve," was to come at the very end of the show -- around the time when the "12 Days to Christmas" number, whose video I posted here the other day (12 days before Christmas) comes in. It's a lovely, wistful ballad, but in his liner notes Harnick writes that the song just didn't move the story forward enough and had to be taken out. It's sung here by the composers, with Harnick in the lead. And the final number is probably best-described as a show song, one that really only fits within the context of the musical. Harnick notes that it was ultimately too complex and didn't work well-enough for that, so it too was cut. But it's good fun to hear, especially with Harnick filling in the dialogue. And if you do know the show, you'll recognize that some of the lyrics were saved and able to be used elsewhere in the show, mixed in as a sort of sardonic counterpoint in the song "Ilona." Here then are Harnick and Bock singing, "Merry Christmas Bells." Okay, it's time. Last night I popped in my DVD of the holiday gem Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol for my annual viewing, so it's only fitting that today we offer its wonderful songs. (And a joyous addendum to follow as a bonus.) The classic show was the first-ever animated holiday special, made in 1962 and for eight years it got repeated annually through 1969. But its simplistic animation finally caught up and alas it went out of the rotation. A shame since it's such a terrific production. For all its being Mr. Magoo and only 52 minutes long, it's a very nice adaptation of the story. And the score...well, it's Broadway quality and probably the best musical score for an animated TV special, and one of the best for TV, period. The music is by Jule Styne (Gypsy, Bells are Ringing) and the lyrics by Bob Merrill (Carnival, Take Me Along) who -- while writing this -- were, in fact, in the middle of working on Funny Girl. Though no longer on network TV, for a long time the show could be found every year on syndication. But unfortunately even that has largely faded away, though occasionally it pops up. But on its 50th anniversary in 2012, NBC brought it back to prime time, and happily its DVD release gave the show new life. Here are several of the wonderful songs. With, as noted, a bonus at the end. The first, "Ringle Ringle" introduces us to Scrooge and Bob Cratchit. When Scrooge visits the Crachit house in Christmas Present, the family sings the rousing showstopper, "The Lord's Bright Blessing." In Christmas Past, Scrooge returns to an almost-empty schoolhouse of his youth and sings a duet of himself as a young boy, "I'm All Alone in the World." In Christmas Future, Scrooge visits a junk shop run by thieves who have ransacked the now-empty house of a man who was died -- which he doesn't realize yet is him -- and they explain with very amusing glee that "We're Despicable." As I mentioned, here is the bonus addendum. For those who were skeptical of me calling this a Broadway-quality score, It turns out (aside from the reality that it is) that the show did play on Broadway -- sort of. In 2014, the Actors Fund did a benefit concert with a fairly elaborate staged reading of the TV show, with full costumes, limited sets and even some choreography. And since it was successful, they repeated it with a new production in 2019. This is a 4-minute montage of the 2019 production. (I use this in large part because it includes the wonderful Sierra Boggess who starred on Broadway in The Little Mermaid, and in currently starring there in Barry Manilows's musical Harmony. Here, she sings "Winter Was Warm.) And the production looks absolutely wonderful. And sounds like they used the original music arrangements. (At the end of the 2014 video are some credits, and it notes being done with DreamWorks Animation and Margaret Styne. I'm going to guess that the former hold the rights to the TV special and the latter may hold some rights since she was the wife of composer Jule Styne.) Since the show is only about 52 minutes, it's much too short to mount a full production, but I suspect it could be paired with another one-act show or also done in community theaters. By the way, their adaptation of the thieves' song, "We're Despicable," is scary-good how close they came with the casting and even the animated choreography. Even down to the tiny details, at one point, of the comically-weird, twisty hand movements. For several years now as part of the Holiday Music Fest, including this year, I’ve played some song from a 1956 TV musical production of A Christmas Carol, that was called The Stingiest Man in Town, which was done for The Alcoa Hour. I had the cast album, and as far as I knew that was all that existed. But as another of those major treats, I just found a video of the entire 80-minute TV production! And if anything qualifies as “little-known” for the Holiday Music Fest, this is it. Normally, I’d post it on Christmas Eve as befits the story, but that spot is reserved for my favorite adaptation of the story, a BBC radio version with Sir Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield, so we’ll post this ahead of time. It's very early television, so the production and video quality is a bit creaky. But it comes through fine enough and is a respectably done version of the story – and is fun, as well, seeing something from early days of TV…and done live. when maneuvering around a soundstage wasn’t as simple as today. The cast is part of the treat here. Though many of the names are not well-known today, they were for the time. It’s all led by Basil Rathbone as Scrooge, easily the most famous name in the cast today for his years playing Sherlock Holmes in the movies. Marley's Ghost is played by Robert Weede, a major Metropolitan Opera star who later moved into more popular culture productions, most notably as the star in Frank Loesser’s Broadway musical, The Most Happy Fella. And Bob Cratchit is played by Martyn Green, one of the leading stars of the renowned D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, a group famous for being considered the home of Gilbert & Sullivan productions. There’s another Metropolitan Opera star here, as well – Patrice Munsel, who made a few movies and TV shows, and plays Belle in this production. The show also features two popular singers of the era – Johnny Desmond as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, and Vic Damone as Young Scrooge. And the popular singing group The Four Lads perform as a sort of travelling Greek Chorus, filling in some narration. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of my favorite character actors, John McGiver, even in just a very small role. Here, he plays the first of two gentlemen who come to Scrooge’s office asking for a Christmas donation. The score is serviceable, as the expression goes, though there are a few solid numbers, like “Mankind is My Business” and "Birthday Party for the King." The music is by Fred Spielman, with lyrics by Janice Torre, who wrote the teleplay. And definitely worth noting is that it’s directed by Daniel Petrie, who had a long career directing movies and TV. His most famous movie was A Raisin in the Sun, and for TV he did the film Sybil for which Sally Field won an Emmy as Best Actress and established her as a serious actress. (SIDE NOTE: If you stick around to the end credits, they announce next week's show -- which sounds tremendous! It's Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced ...which has a seriously impressive cast: Jessica Tandy, Roger Moore, and the legendary Gracie Fields, as 'Miss Marple'. And no, alas, I can't find a video of it online.) Which brings us to Christmas Eve, the very night that Jacob Marley died seven years ago… Since it is now officially 12 days to Christmas, I figured what better time to post the song "Twelve Days to Christmas" from the 1963 musical, She Loves Me. The show has a score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, who (among their many shows) the next year wrote Fiddler on the Roof. She Loves Me is based on the Hungarian play (and its subsequent Hollywood movie, Shop Around the Corner) which were the foundation of the movie You've Got Mail. If you've seen any of those, this song comes near the end to show the passage of time as Mr. Novak tries to build up his relationship with Amelia Balish, with whom he had long been sniping, but only recently discovered has been his pen pal with who he's in love. While on the album here the song is only a chorus number, on stage it's interwoven with snippets of that developing relationship. I used to post footage from the 1993 Roundabout Theatre Broadway revival that starred Judy Kuhn and Boyd Gaines, however that video doesn't seem to be available anymore. But -- good news, I found a montage reel with six songs from that production, plus the curtain call, and it included "Twelve Days to Christmas"...so I edited it to get the song, finale and curtain call and can offer them here. |
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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