Even More Heart

4/16/2014

For no other reason than in honor of the Heartbleed bug vulnerability and because it's the first month of the baseball season, here's my favorite song from Damn Yankees, with a score by Jerry Ross and Richard Adler. "Heart."

The manager is played by Russ Brown, and the three ball players from left to right are: Albert Linville, Nathaniel Frey and Jimmy Komack. All four, by the way, were in the original Broadway production.

The latter two are the most notable. Komack later -- as James Komack -- became an extremely successful TV writer and producer, most notably as executive producer (and a somewhat controversial one) of Welcome Back, Kotter. And Nathaniel Frey, with an extremely distinctive deep New York voice, is one of my favorite Broadway character actors, often used by Harnick and Bock -- co-starring in their Fiorello! and She Loves Me.

3 Comments

Douglass Abramson

4/16/2014 11:43:23 am

Washington. First in war. First in piece. Last in the American League. I didn't realize; until I looked at his IMDB page, to double check his producer credit for The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Chico and the Man, that he directed one of the best episodes of the original Star Trek: A Piece of the Action. If you haven't seen it, think Robin and the 7 Hoods. Only with Vic Tayback and ray guns. (And no, Shatner and Nimoy do not sing, thank god.)

Robert Elisberg

4/16/2014 12:23:10 pm

I do recall that episode. They keep trying, without much success, to get Spock to speak the gangster lingo.

Douglass Abramson

4/16/2014 12:33:35 pm

Yup. It has no business being as good as it is. The budget dictated the script. Some suit at the studio wanted to reuse the left over costumes, props and sets from The Untouchables. Making that work on a show with a spaceship had to have been a headache for everyone.

Even More Heart

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