How Sweet It Is to Find

This is another of those "hidden treasure" Broadway treats.

A while back, I had several pieces about a 1959 musical I like a lot, but that's little known, Take Me Along.  It starred Jackie Gleason (who won Best Actor that year) and Walter Pidgeon -- and got eight Tony nominations, including Best Musical, running for a year, 448 performances.  It also brought a young Robert Morse to attention. It has a wonderful score by Bob Merrill, who also wrote the great show Carnival (as well as the lyrics for Funny Girl -- and lyrics for the beloved-around-these-parts animated TV special, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.) What's also odd-ish about the Take Me Along is that it's a musical comedy based on a play by, of all people, Eugene O'Neil, his play Ah, Wilderness!

I wrote about it extensively here, and included the audio of the wonderful title song.

The audio only, alas, because it's pretty near impossible to find video from the show, 58 years old.  One of my fond hopes is to find the title song video somewhere, but it's pretty unlikely.  Indeed, it was always pretty unlikely to find any video of the show.  But -- I did!

It's not a live performance on stage, but rather a TV re-creation of one of the big numbers with Jackie Gleason in full costume, full set and full chorus. And being for performed television -- in this case, a special, The Fabulous Fifities -- the quality is very good.  This is the song, Sid Ol' Kid, which is the introduction of Jackie Gleason's character to the show.  He's a bit of a rascal with a wanderlust spirit who left town several years back, but has just come back home.