STAGE TO SCREENS: "Good Thing Going: Celebrating Sondheim at 75," The Museum of Television & Radio Tribute
By Michael Buckley
13 Mar 2005
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Stephen Sondheim
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | This month we speak with the Museum of Television & Radio Associate Curator Rebecca Paller and Jane Klain, Manager, Research Services, about the retrospective in honor of Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday (March 22). Several new items have been added to the program, originally shown at the time that the composer-lyricist turned 70.
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"Could it be? Yes, it could. Something's coming, something good. . . " Among
the new acquisitions, notes Rebecca Paller, "are two really valuable clips.
One is from 'The Carol Burnett Show' in 1971 — Carol Burnett, Marilyn
Horne and Eileen Farrell singing 'You Could Drive a Person Crazy.' It's a
delightful piece. Vicki Lawrence introduces it and talks about
Company, which was then on Broadway.
"The other [clip] is from 'The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson' in
1973. D'Jamin Bartlett sings 'The Miller's Son,' and she and Glynis Johns
chat with Carson. Back then, the show originated in New York, and about
20 minutes were devoted to A Little Night Music. Now you
occasionally get maybe five minutes at the end of Letterman devoted to a
Broadway musical, and the song is usually out of context. I remember seeing
[the Bartlett performance] as a kid, and thinking: 'When I grow up, I've got
to move to New York.'"
Jane Klain is excited that the new material includes "a 2000 German-made
documentary that hasn't been shown in this country. It's an English-language
version and has interviews with Sondheim, Milton Babbitt [a composer with
whom Sondheim studied] and [conductor] Paul Gemignani. There's never been a full-length [Sondheim] documentary done [in America].
"From a special about Hollywood's diamond jubilee we have Yvonne DeCarlo in
front of the restored Hollywood sign — singing 'I'm Still Here.' We have a
'Times Talks' [program] from 2004, with Sondheim and Barbara Cook
interviewed by Stephen Holden. That's only been seen locally [in New York
City]."
Says Paller, "Jane Klain is a fabulous, fabulous detective. We all do
detective work here, but she's fabulous at tracking things down. Even things
we don't think exist, she optimistically continues to track down."
Among Sondheim items for which Klain continues to search (for the
collection) are "a color version of 'Evening Primrose' and his appearance on
a celebrity edition of the game show 'Password,' on which he appeared with
Lee Remick [a close friend] and her mother. And there are two things we
haven't gotten yet [for the series], but we may get. We hope that there will
be two added surprises."
Klain points out that only some Sondheim shows have been made into movies
(including "West Side Story," "Gypsy," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to
the Forum," "A Little Night Music"), while far more have been done for TV:
"Company" (in England), "Follies in Concert," "A Little Night Music,"
"Sweeney Todd," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Into the Woods," "Putting
It Together" (for cable) and "Passion."
Incidentally, on March 31, PBS will telecast a live performance of a concert
version of Passion, starring Tony winners Patti LuPone, Audra
McDonald and Michael Cerveris (from Frederick P. Rose Hall at Time Warner
Center).
Concludes Paller, "The final program [in the series] is completely new [for
this tribute]. We've added to a lot of the other packages, but the final one
is totally new. It's really quite something — 50 years of Sondheim's
work on television."
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The salute will be shown at the museums in Manhattan (25 West 52nd Street, 212-621-6800) and Los Angeles (465 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, 310-786-1000). New York screenings are Tuesdays-Sundays at 2 PM, and Thursdays at 5 PM; in Los Angeles, they're Wednesdays-Sundays at 2 PM. Dates, titles, lengths and contents follow.
March 18-27, "Early Days," 130 minutes. The program includes a Crista Moore recording of Sondheim's 1952 song "The Two of You," written for (but not used by) the children's TV show, "Kukla, Fran & Ollie." Also: a segment on
the 1997 production of Saturday Night; a 1954 episode (written by
Sondheim) of the sitcom "Topper," starring Robert Sterling, his wife Anne
Jeffreys and Leo G. Carroll; "In an Early Winter," a 1959 Sondheim
teleplay, starring Kim Hunter and Pat Hingle; and "Evening Primrose," the
1966 Sondheim-James Goldman musical written for TV, starring Anthony
Perkins, Charmain Carr and Dorothy Stickney.
March 29-April 3, (hereafter, the starting dates in L.A. are always a day
later than New York), "West Side Story Revisited," 175 minutes. Larry Kert and Carol Lawrence perform the balcony scene in a 1958 sequence from "The Ed Sullivan Show"; a 1958 episode of "Look Up and Live," featuring Kert, Lawrence, Jerome Robbins and Mickey Calin (later Michael Callan); a 1961 episode of "The American Musical Theatre," with Sondheim, Martha Wright and host Earl Wrightson; and the 1985 "Great Performances" episode, "Bernstein Conducts West Side Story."
April 5-10, "Everything's Coming Up Gypsy," 160 minutes. It features
home movies made during rehearsals of the original production; Ethel
Merman's appearance on a 1965 talk show, hosted by Gypsy Rose Lee; and the 1993 TV version of the Sondheim-Jule Styne-Arthur Laurents musical, starring Bette Midler. Continued...
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