Monthly Archives: August 2009

Every year at the Hollywood Bowl, they do a "concert" version of a famous Broadway musical. In this case, "concert" means no sets and some rather odd staging so that the actors can cover the vast Bowl stage. I've seen good and bad there but the best I've seen to date was this year's presentation, which was Guys & Dolls. They did it for three nights — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — and some friends and I were there last night for Sunday's.

Brian Stokes Mitchell played Sky Masterson. He was terrific, capturing well the smooth macho imperative of the character. Scott Bakula was Nathan Detroit and he was pretty good in what is generally a thankless task, musically. Sam Levene, who originated the role on Broadway, wasn't much of a singer so his songs kept getting assigned to other characters, and he was left with "Sue Me" and an order to mouth the words but not sing aloud in the group numbers. This has left every Nathan Detroit since wondering why everyone gets to sing in the show but him.

For the movie, they cast the role with that well-known non-singer, Frank Sinatra. To give Ol' Blue Eyes something to warble, they added him to the title song (where, of course, his character is singing absolutely against his established motivation) and composer Frank Loesser wrote him a new, forgettable song called "Adelaide." For the Hollywood Bowl production, they added in the "Adelaide" number and it actually sounded rather nice…better than when Frank did it in the movie.

Okay, so much for the male leads. Adelaide was played by Ellen Greene, who was so wonderful in the musical version of Little Shop of Horrors, and who basically played the same role here. So you got Ellen playing Audrey playing Adelaide…but it worked. Every now and then when Adelaide was talking about how she wanted to settle down in a little house with Nathan, you expected her to start singing "Somewhere That's Green," but basically it was a great characterization, which I guess was to be expected. The real surprise of the night though was Jessica Biels as Miss Sarah. She struggled a mite with the more operatic portions of the score but when she sang in her natural range, she was delightful…and when they took the bows at the end, she got the biggest ovation.

Two close runners-up for that distinction would be Ken Page, who played Nicely-Nicely Johnson, and our pal Jason Graae, who portrayed Benny Southstreet. Page played the same role in the seventies' (all black) revival of the show and he stopped the show then with "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," a feat he repeated at the Bowl. Stubby Kaye, wherever he is today, may own that song but Ken Page got himself a lease with an option to buy.

A great night. Kudos to director Richard Jay-Alexander and choreographer Donna McKechnie and to everyone involved. I wish you could see it. Heck, I wish I could see it again. When that show's done right, there's not a whole lot that's better.

Do you get the Reelz Channel on your teevee? I get it on DirecTV but it also seems to be on a lot of cable lineups. It's a channel that promotes (mostly) upcoming movies and until this week, the only thing I watched on it was Secret's Out, a fine program hosted by my buddy Leonard Maltin. On it, Leonard spotlights obscure films and video releases, and he often has wonderful guests — the kind of person who doesn't get interviewed often but should.

Anyway, for some reason, Reelz is running episodes this week only of Carson's Comedy Classics, a half-hour syndicated series that was made up of sketches and bits from Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. They have ten episodes that each run three times a day, and you've probably already missed Monday's. Check your listings and set your TiVo or VCR if that kind of thing interests you. I dunno why they're putting these on or why it's only for one week…but hey, there's lots of stuff out there I don't understand. Like, why would anyone with an I.Q. over 50 listen to or even interview Orly Taitz?

In case you've been wondering, the perky lady in those incessant TV ads for Progressive Auto Insurance is named Stephanie Courtney. I like her but I wish there was some rule that said that if your company is going to run ninety commercials an hour, you have more than two different ones in the rotation.

Voice actor and historian Craig Crumpton has written an open letter to the Hollywood trade papers (Variety and Hollywood Reporter) to complain about their coverage of the salary dispute in the Futurama negotiations. His point, and it's a good one, is that the articles put the actors in a negative light by making it seem like their demands were vastly more outrageous than they actually were. Both papers later quietly, and without the customary announcements of corrections, amended the online versions of the articles to tone down those assertions.

Obviously, we don't know exactly what happened here. But it's certainly not unprecedented for either paper to publish something that's planted by one side in a financial dispute to try and put pressure on the other side…and for the trade paper to pretend that the info came from some uninterested third party, rather than from the side doing the planting.

People are writing me to ask how to learn more about the 1963 Jerry Lewis Show. Well, one good way would be to seek out a long out-o'-print paperback by Richard Gehman called That Kid: The Story of Jerry Lewis. At least, I think it was only a paperback. I've never seen a hardcover and I gather that even the paperback didn't get a lot of attention when it came out. But it's a pretty good bio of Jerry, including contemporaneous coverage of his TV debacle.

Richard Gehman was a prominent author of his day, specializing in celebrity profiles. He often got access to follow stars around for a few weeks so he could interview them extensively and report on what he observed…and then they wouldn't like the resulting book or article because he'd (gasp, choke) quoted what they said and reported on what he observed. I have the feeling Jerry regretted letting Gehman hang around when they were assembling that Jerry Lewis Show.

Gehman's book on Sinatra — Sinatra and His Rat Pack — is also hard-to-find but worth the effort. Many who've written since about Frank, Dino, Sammy and the rest have obviously secured copies and borrowed liberally. In any case, though Mr. Gehman is long gone, the family tradition lives on. One his daughters, Pleasant Gehman, is an actress-dancer-musician but also an important writer covering the current music scene.

Glenn Greenwald writes about a deal that seems to have been brokered 'twixt Fox News and MSNBC to tone down the attacks some on each channel have hurled at the other. In particular, says Greenwald, Keith Olbermann has toned down his mentions of Bill O'Reilly in light of this new understanding.

That might not sound improper and if it had been done for the sake of civility, it might even be admirable. But Greenwald says it was done because the invective seemed to be harming the corporate interests of the respective parent companies. One wonders if when he returns from vacation — this Monday, I believe — Mr. Olbermann will feel the need to prove he is not a signatory to this deal.

This is from last November but I just now saw it. It's a profile of Teller (of Penn &…) by Richard Abowitz.