Let's Have a Bit of Applause

In the early 1970s, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams (who earlier had written Bye Bye Birdie) wrote the musical Applause, which was based on the classic film, All About Eve.  The show won the Tony as Best musical, and also got a Tony as Best Actress for its star, Lauren Bacall.

The show is fairly good, with an effective, if not distinguished score, but several standout songs.  One of the biggest oddities of the score, is that the best number of the show -- which is the title song -- not only wasn't sung by the show's star, but it wasn't even sung by any of the major supporting cast.  It was performed by one of the lesser characters (who, as whimsy would have it, became the biggest break-out star of the show, Bonnie Franklin, who got a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actress and went on to star in the series, One Day at a Time).  I posted that full number here from the 1970 Tony Award broadcast.

Though there was no movie made (somewhat surprising, since it's based on such a legendary film and starred a legendary actress), they did produce a TV version In 1973, in which Bacall re-created her performance, 

This is an enjoyable number, "One of a Kind," from later in the show when Bacall's character has a a bit of a reconciliation with her boyfriend, the director of the productions she's starring in.  Making this particularly enjoyable is that he's played by Larry Hagman -- five years before his J.R. days starring in Dallas, and he does a nice job.  (He had a brief career in stage musicals, beginning in the chorus of the London production of South Pacific that of course starred his mother, Mary Martin.  Nepotism, of course, helped, but as you can see here, he's a respectable performer on his own.)  After the song, the clip continues with a scene that has Penny Fuller re-creating her Tony-nominated performance for Best Featured Actress as Eve, wheedling her way through things.