Back here, I expressed my amazement that the Senate had passed a bill — unanimously! — to make Daylight Saving Time permanent. That's the current U.S. Senate which you wouldn't think could reach total agreement on a bill that said there should be chocolate chips in chocolate chip cookies. Well, we all should have suspected that unanimous vote was an aberration.
My pal Bob Elisberg, who blogs here, calls my attention to an article in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank. It seems the unanimous vote was kind of an accident…a mistake made by 100 Senators who didn't know what the heck they were voting for. Kinda scary that that can happen.
Then the other day here, I posted a link to the "Lullaby of Broadway" number from 42nd Street as performed in a London production. Bob suggests that I also offer you the number as performed by the original cast at the 1981 Tony Awards ceremony. The original cast included Jerry Orbach as Julian Marsh.
This was the first Broadway show I ever saw on or around Broadway. The year was 1983 and I was back in New York for meetings with the DC Comics folks (for whom I was writing/editing Blackhawk), ABC's Saturday morning department (for whom I was writing ABC Weekend Specials) and NBC's daytime department (for whom I was developing a gothic-flavored soap opera).
One evening, my pals Marv Wolfman and Len Wein and I went down to Times Square to the TKTS booth and picked out a show to see, bought half-price tickets, then went to dinner at a Beefsteak Charlie's — a now-extinct chain that then was about as ubiquitous in New York as Duane Reade drug stores, hot dog vendors or Naked Cowboys are today. Then we went to the Winter Garden Majestic Theatre and there we saw 42nd Street. It was everything you'd expect in a show of that sort.
The next night, some other friends of mine and I went to dinner at the Russian Tea Room, followed by the musical Nine at the 46th Street Theater, which is now the Richard Rodgers. It was snowing lightly when we went in see the show and when we came out, we found ourselves in the 13th largest snowstorm on record in the city — no cars on the streets, no trains running, howling winds blowing around the snow and the people…and we were a full mile from the Sherry-Netherland Hotel where we were staying.
I enjoyed the night before a whole lot more. Here's that number from the Tony Awards…