Sundays with Sullivan: The November Edstravaganza

We return to another collection, compiled by a fellow named Jim Berg, of Broadway musicals numbers performed during the 23 years of The Ed Sullivan Show, the remarkable archive of hit and flop musicals whose original cast performances would likely be otherwise lost.

(As I've noted, I try to post these on the first Sunday of every month.  If you miss any, just do a search for the word "Edstravaganza".)

We start with the continuation of a number with Shelly Berman from the flop, A Family Affair.  The show flopped but as I noted before, it was written together by three friends who not only met at summer camp...but at my summer camp, oft-mentioned here, Camp Nebagamon, and they shared an apartment in New York…each later to go on to great fame:  John Kander (Cabaret and Chicago), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men), and his older brother James Goldman (The Lion in Winter, and Stephen Sondheim's Follies).

(If you want to refresh you memory on the full sequence, you can return to the link here and jump to the end at the 25:15 mark.)

Next is The Sound of Music, though not the original cast.  This instead features the second replacement for ‘Maria,’ played by Nancy Dussault (who later starred in the TV series, Too Close for Comfort).  She and the Von Trapp children sing “Do Re Mi.”  None of whom are dressed in anything close to the show’s costumes.

Then, we have a full 10-minute scene leading into the rousing song “Deep Down Inside” from Little Me, that starred Sid Caesar, who famously played eight different roles in the show, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical.

And then Georgia Brown, the original ‘Nancy’ in Oliver! Both in the initial London production and then repeating it on Broadway.  She sings “I’d Do Anything” here with the ‘Artful Dodger’ who – if you look closely and have a seriously-impressive eye for faces – you’ll see is played by a very young Davy Jones, who later was one of The Monkees (and who co-starred with Harry Secombe in Pickwick, in its highly-successful pre-Broadway tour).  And that number number is followed by Georgia Brown belting out her famous “As Long as He Needs Me.”  (A couple of additional casting notes:  ‘Fagin’ is played here by Clive Revill, who was the killer in the very last episode of Columbo during its initial run, about an Northern Irish gun-runner.  And the young girl playing ‘Bet,’ who ‘Oliver’ sings to is Alice Playten who had a nice career, but is probably best know to people of her generation for a series of Alka Seltzer ads playing a newlywed wife who can’t cook.) 

Note that though there are eight more minutes listed for the video, for whatever reason the screen is blank, so you can stop right here.  But more to come in another video later…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW5BPb7fOto