Tovarich
This is a treat.
Tovarich is a largely-unknown musical that opened on Broadway in 1963. It didn't have a very successful run, though did last for more than half a year, 264 performances. The score by Lee Pockriss and Anne Croswell is pleasant though nothing memorable. So, why do I have a video from it here?
That's because it's a song with one of the show's stars -- Vivien Leigh.
Yes, that's not a typo. Vivien Leigh.
And by all accounts she was quite good in the show. In fact, that's not guesswork, she won the Tony Award as Best Leading Actress in a Musical. The show had a pretty strong male lead, as well -- Jean Pierre Aumont, who was a pretty well-regarded film actor at the time. (I suspect this cast had a whole lot to do with the show running as long as it did.)
Though it's clear in this clip that her signing is not particularly strong, she dances up a storm, and there's a lot of charm to it all. And even though you would figure that she was in her comfort zone when it came to the acting scenes, Vivien Leigh, wonderful an actress as she is, is nonetheless.not first though of for her comedy. Yet she must have been wonderful, winning the Tony as she did.
The clip if from The Ed Sullivan Show, and Ed does a detailed job explaining the plot, so I'll leave that to him, rather than go into it here. Here, I'll just show Vivien Leigh singing and dancing, along with Byron Mitchell, from Tovarich.
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