LET’S DO THE TWIST By Peter Filichia
Twice in the same year, Anita Gillette played characters who were interested in the dance that the nation had been fervently embracing. The Twist. In early 1962, in ALL AMERICAN — the musical that Charles Strouse and Lee Adams wrote immediately after BYE BYE BIRDIE — Gillette played a college student Susan. She established in her […]
42ND STREET FORTY YEARS AGO By Peter Filichia
On August 25, 1980, legendary producer David Merrick gave what is still, forty years later, the most remembered curtain speech in Broadway history. He’d wait until the enraptured 42ND STREET first-night audience had finished awarding close to a dozen curtain calls to this “song & dance extravaganza” — words he’d soon use to advertise what […]
The Oliver Messel Suite By Peter Filichia
Listened to HOUSE OF FLOWERS, GIGI and L’IL ABNER last week. (I’d advise you to do the same THIS week. There are many pleasures to be had. Why these three albums? They’d seem to have as little in common as the places in which they were respectively set: The French West Indies of FLOWERS is […]
THE BEST DOUBLEHEADER EVER By Peter Filichia
With all the recent talk about a certain show celebrating a certain anniversary, I was reminded that it’s been forty-five years since I had the best theatrical doubleheader of my life. Saturday afternoon, August 9, 1975: CHICAGO at the matinee, fewer than ten weeks after it had opened at the 46th Street Theatre. That evening, […]
THE EARLY DAYS OF GAY By Peter Filichia
Broadway has seen three songs called “Yesterday,” five titled “Home” and eleven dubbed “I Love You.” Some might prefer “Yesterday” from ROBERTA to the others. Many will think that “Home” from 70, GIRLS, 70 is the best of its bunch. Yet other musical theater fans may prefer LITTLE ME’s “I Love You” over SONG OF […]
