Cole Porter's oft-revived musical Anything Goes debuted on Broadway in 1934. Twenty years later, they did a one-hour adaptation of it on TV's Colgate Comedy Hour with Ethel Merman, Bert Lahr and Frank Sinatra. To get it down to that length, they had to throw away half the book, two-thirds of the songs and most of the sense. The show was really kind of a shambles but the performances more than made up for it.
It also featured a performance by Lou Krugman. Lou was one of my favorite actors to spot in supporting roles. From about 1950 until around 1980, he was on every single episode of every single TV show done in either Los Angeles or New York, including live shows done simultaneously on opposite coasts. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration…but I'm still amazed at how often I spot him in old TV programs. I would guess his Internet Movie Database list of credits is no more than 10% complete. I'll write more about him some day here.
Getting back to Anything Goes: If you had to turn a 2.5 hour musical into an hour live TV special (an hour, that is, minus commercials), the last thing you'd do is add songs to it, right? Right. But Merman and Lahr both insisted they wouldn't do the special unless the song "Friendship" was added to the show. "Friendship" is a ditty that Porter wrote for another show, the rarely-revived DuBarry Was a Lady. So they stuck it in and it more or less became a part of Anything Goes. Most revivals since then include it.
And you'd figure the last thing you had to worry about was having the show run short, right? Well, it did. It was reportedly right on time throughout rehearsals and then when they did it live to all of America, they ended with about five minutes to fill. Frank, Ethel and Bert had to nervously ad-lib and sing encores. The video of the whole show, which I've embedded below, has some commercials missing so it runs 52 minutes…
Oh — and if you just want to see Ethel and Bert do "Friendship," which runs about two minutes, here's just that. It's the best part so they were right to demand it…