By Michael Buckley
26 Sep 2004

Julie Andrews, host of "Broadway: The American Musical"
photo by Marty Sohl/Thirteen/WNET

This month we speak to Michael Kantor, who created, directed, co-wrote (with Marc Fields, JoAnn Young and Laurence Maslon) and co-produced the six-hour series, "Broadway: The American Musical." Hosted by Julie Andrews, it will be shown on PBS in three parts: October 19, 20 and 21. The documentary, in my opinion, ranks as a musical counterpart to "Angels in America."

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"I've always wanted to create a documentary on the history of Broadway," Michael Kantor told me for my April 2003 column. "Musical theatre is uniquely American; the musical started on Broadway." Then a work in progress, the finished product (a ten-year project for Kantor) is lush, intelligent and — most of all — vastly entertaining. While musical-theatre fans may be familiar with much of the material, it's similar to attending a Barbara Cook concert; you've heard some songs before, but not the way that Cook does them.

Most appealing is that Kantor was able to strike a balance between entertaining an audience that occasionally attends musicals and yet not alienating the buffs. Sure, everyone recognizes Julie Andrews — beloved by both Average Jo(e) and aficionado — but how many people are that familiar with Stephen Mo Hanan (who speaks about Al Jolson, whom he played in Jolson & Company)?

"The goal was always to appeal to viewers from eight to eighty," notes Kantor, "and try to be true to Broadway. If we're using a Fred Astaire film clip, he's doing a song he'd sung on Broadway. He was reprising it in front of the camera. People would say, 'You're not using Liza Minnelli's 'Cabaret' performance [of the title song], and I'd say, 'No, we've got [a clip of] Jill Haworth; she did it on Broadway.' That's our story. When you see Sam Levene and Vivian Blaine doing their little bit [a snippet of 'Sue Me'] from Guys and Dolls, that's the real McCoy. That's one of my favorite finds, by the way; it's from the BBC, when the show went to London [after the original Broadway production]. Time and again, I was challenging myself, asking 'What would Hal Prince think? Or Stephen Sondheim or John Kander? What would people who lived this think?'"

Also incorporated are numerous movie and TV clips, home movies and archival footage. Starting in 1996, Kantor conducted many interviews; among them: Al Hirschfeld, Carol Channing, Mel Brooks, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Chita Rivera, Jerry Orbach, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Jerry Herman, Stephen Sondheim, Joel Grey, John Raitt, June Havoc, Patricia Morison, Sheldon Harnick, Michael Kidd, Harold Prince, Tommy Tune, Arthur Laurents, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Harvey Fierstein, Jerome Chodorov, Peter Stone, John Lahr and Brendan Gill.

To have Julie Andrews host was, observes Kantor, "a dream come true. She's a great storyteller. She brings emotion to things that need it. For Julie Andrews to walk out on the stage of the New Amsterdam [to film a segment] and for Michael Kantor, documentary filmmaker, to say, 'Action.' Well, it just doesn't get better than that!"

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Entitled "Give My Regards to Broadway: 1893-1927" and "Syncopated City: 1919-1933," the first two hours profile George M. Cohan, Bert Williams, Irving Berlin, Fanny Brice, Al Jolson, Eubie Blake, George Gershwin, Eddie Cantor and Rodgers and Hart. There are clips of Ziegfeld Follies shows (in color), Show Boat and James Cagney (portraying Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy," the 1942 musical biography, incorrectly listed as a 1943 picture). Also represented: Marilyn Miller, the Marx Brothers, Ray Bolger, Bill Robinson, Bobby Clark, Will Rogers, W.C. Fields, Bert Lahr, and (Lou) Clayton, (Eddie) Jackson, and (Jimmy) Durante. Continued...

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