Were Broadway Musicals representative of Arts and Entertainment in the 1990s? Consumers have only a few more days to vote and decide, via the U.S. Postal Service's "Celebrate the Century" program.
The musical Cats was already voted in as one of 15 stamps devoted to the 1980s. In the Arts & Entertainment Category for the 1990s, "Broadway Musicals" finds itself up against Contemporary Architecture, "Jurassic Park," Computer Art & Graphics, "Seinfeld" and "Titanic."
Other categories include People & Events (e.g., the Gulf War), Sports (Special Olympics), Science & Technology (World Wide Web) and Lifestyle (Home Offices, Coffee). Of the five choices in each category, the top two vote-getters will become stamps, alongside five other topics that score the next-highest vote count overall.
For example, Cats racked up 169,357 votes in the poll, high enough to qualify it for the commemorative stamp series. ("E.T., The Extra Terrestrial" led the Arts & Entertainment field with 239,189 votes, followed by "The Cosby Show" with 194,517. Both Cats and "Hip-Hop Culture" (158,509) made the cut; Country Music and "The Bonfire of the Vanities" did not.)
For information on the "Celebrate the Century" balloting, check out the USPS website, http://www.stampvote.msn.com. Theatre lovers were also given a postal present back in March, when the USPS released a stamp dedicated to the acting husband-and-wife team of Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne.
-- By David Lefkowitz