This is a wonderful, almost 7-minute scene and song from the musical The Rothschilds, performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1970. Written by Harnick and Bock (who did Fiddler on the Roof), it won a Tony Award for a lesser-known Hal Linden as Best Leading Actor in a Musical and is pretty much what helped make him a star. The show had a respectable run of 507 performances, which is over a year, about 15 months. It has a very nice score, though I think, for my taste. stronger in the first act. It also won a second Tony Award, that for Keene Curtis as Best Featured Actor in a Musical, playing several roles. (People might best recognize him for a periodic role on Cheers, as 'John Allen Hill,' the totally bald proprietor of the restaurant upstairs who continually gave 'Sam' a hard time and pretty much always, if not always, came out ahead.) The number here is “Sons,” a clever piece that sort of serves as a montage of patriarch 'Mayer Rothschild' with dreams of breaking down walls to get his family out of the Frankfurt ghetto by building a dynasty. And for anyone who only knows of Linden from the TV series Barney Miller, this will show his impressive singing. Interestingly, in 2015, Harnick and the show's book writer, Sherman Yellen, adapted the musical into a one-act production, Rothschild & Sons, which played off-Broadway and had a cast album recorded. It focused the story somewhat more on the family -- which was the core of the original show's strong first act -- rather than following the sons as much when they went off to build fame across Europe, during which period the character of 'Mayer' died. (Always one of the hurdles the original musical had, losing its leading man early. They kept trying to come up with ways of putting off his death as much as possible, but at a certain point it couldn't be put off.) Several Harnick and Bock songs for the original production that had never been used were added back into the score. By the way, the second Rothschild son who appears, 'Solomon,' who wears glasses and is studious, carrying around his book, is played by a young Robby Benson. As a bonus, this is a short video of Hal Linden talking about how he got the role in the show, though he was still not yet a leading man. It largely came about through his long acquaintance with Sheldon Harnick that began when he was in a show that the woman Harnick was dating at the time (and later married) had a major role in it, so he came to the theater a lot and got to know Linden on both a professional and social level.
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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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