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Decent Quality Since 1847

Top of the Hill

8/19/2014

6 Comments

 
In all my years of watching the Tony Awards, I've only seen them do something like this one or two other times, and even with those others I'm stretching my memory and can't swear to it, though I'm fairly sure.

This is a tribute that the 1987 Tonys gave to Robert Preston who had just passed away during the year. What's so special about it is how elaborate the production is, and how wonderful the people they got to participate -- but also (and perhaps most of all)...that they did this at all.

This is what I mean --

The other tributes that I have vague memories of were for Ethel Merman and Mary Martin.  Maybe.  But if so (and assuming so), they were both about as big legends as Broadway has ever produced.  Robert Preston did a bunch of plays on Broadway, Maybe eight to 10, though most were supporting cast, and none of his starring roles in plays were particular hits.  (He starred in the original production of The Lion in Winter -- though it only ran for 92 performances.  It's the movie version that brought the work its acclaim.)  

He also made musicals, but only four of them, and two were big flops.  One was a solid success (a two-person show, I Do!  I Do!, opposite Mary Martin), though not something that would be called a great smash, it ran for a bit more than a year.  Indeed, In all his Broadway career, he really only had one show that could be considered huge -- but -- ahh, that "but."  But The Music Man was so massive, so iconic, so beloved that it seems to have trumped everything.  His career was perfectly good on Broadway, but there were lots of performers who had perfectly good careers on Broadway -- in fact, many even better -- yet none got tributes, let alone major productions like this.  And this is a major production, 11 minutes!  And it has to be all because The Music Man was so powerfully ingrained in people's hearts.  (Watch the audience at the 6-minute mark.)  And consider if they would have even considered doing this massive tribute without The Music Man.  It was that meaningful.  In the end, he wasn't just the wonderful Robert Preston -- whose career in Hollywood probably was longer with more successful productions.  He was Prof. Harold Hill.

To be clear, I'm not saying that Robert Preston wasn't great.  He was great.  But there have been lots of great performers on Broadway.  And none ever got a tribute on the Tony Awards, let alone a major production as vibrant as this: an 11-minute tribute on national television.  Eleven minutes!!  But then -- well, none of them played Harold Hill.

And that, on top of everything else that was so good in his career, is deserving of a tribute.

This a wonderful production, with even some terrific surprises.  
6 Comments
Douglass Abramson
8/19/2014 01:17:21 pm

That was a nice tribute, but I think you buried the leed. Robert Preston played Richard with Rosemary Harris as Eleanor and Christopher freaking Walking was Phillip? Please tell me that someone has footage of this.

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Robert Elisberg
8/19/2014 03:29:44 pm

Actually, a bigger story might have been that "A Lion in Winter" with Robert Preston, Rosemary Harris and Christopher Walken only lasted for 92 performances on Broadway. If I had footage of that, it most definitely would have been the whole story. But alas, without footage (that I'm aware of), it's a sentence in this piece...

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Douglass Abramson
8/19/2014 05:34:49 pm

Actually, I've heard too many stories of great Broadway shows that bombed, only for hindsight or a good revival starting a critical re-evaluation of the original production to be surprised about a show closing early. How many people would believe that Chicago wasn't considered a success when the original show closed? I really didn't expect that footage of The Lion in Winter exists. Its just that the film is one of my all time favorites and that cast is so tantalizingly talented and different from what I'm used to.

Reply
Robert Elisberg
8/20/2014 12:45:26 am

Just for the sake of accuracy (something I let slip in calling it, "A Lion in Winter," not "The"...), the original production of "Chicago" ran for almost 1,000 performances. (936, in fact.) Close to 2-1/2 years. It was considered quite a big success. Nothing like the revival, of course, which became a cultural phenomenon, but it did extremely well.

Hmmm. This leads to some related thoughts about success on Broadway, which I might turn in a longer piece...

Laura
9/23/2014 09:53:21 am

Touching tribute... Ms Peters seems to be truly mournful. I think I read he didn't have a funeral, so I guess it allowed some to say goodbye. On the subject of "Broadway flops", I've heard the sound tracks from both Mack and Mabel and Ben Franklin in Paris and found them both terrific. I don't get it...

Reply
Robert Elisberg
9/23/2014 10:37:09 am

Laura, Thanks for your note and thoughts. I'm not as big a fan of "Mack and Mabel" and "Ben Franklin in Paris" as you are, though they both do have good things to offer, more so "Mack and Mabel." Keep in mind, too, we're just hearing the scores -- the books may have been problematic.

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    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

    Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for
    the Huffington Post.  Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel.  As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.

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