Customer Reviews

Broadway - The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There

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BROADWAY THE GOLDEN AGE is a must-see for all serious admirers and fans of theatre. Rick McKay spent several years tracking down and interviewing almost every surviving Broadway star of the Golden Age to share their entertaining, gripping and often very emotional reminisces.

Virtually everybody is included, with highlights being the late great Gwen Verdon (SWEET CHARITY, REDHEAD, CHICAGO, CAN-CAN, DAMN YANKEES), Jerry Orbach (CARNIVAL!, PROMISES PROMISES, CHICAGO) and Uta Hagen (STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE).

The film is peppered with juicy bits of gossip and info, with Shirley MacLaine, John Raitt and Janis Paige all recounting MacLaine's rise to fame following her historic job of understudying Carol Haney in THE PAJAMA GAME. Angela Lansbury fighting tool and nail for the role of MAME and Lainie Kazan being replaced by one of her closest friends, Michele Lee, in SEESAW.

I almost fell out of my chair when rare filmed footage of Ethel Merman in GYPSY and Angela Lansbury in MAME flashed (all-too-briefly) across the screen, and howled with laughter at some of the jokes cracked by Elaine Stritch and Robert Morse.

This release should be a mandatory purchase for anyone who cares about theatre. I was so moved by the end that I was speechless....I'm still speechless. This is more than a documentary, it's a life-changing experience.

It would be easy, perhaps too easy but all together appropriate, to sing Rick McKay's praises. We could say that "he dreamed a dream of days gone by." Or that he "had a dream/a dream about you baby/It's gonna come true baby." Or "to dream the impossible dream " It's only fitting that McKay's impossible dream came true, a dream that began while he was growing up in the '60s in Beech Grove, Indiana. As a child, he read and wondered about the neon lights of Broadway. He wanted to know about the so-called Golden Age of Broadway, when Carol and Gwen and Chita and Robert and Ethel and John and Angela and Alfred and other luminaries lit up the marquees; about the days and nights when a seat in the balcony cost less than a first-run movie ticket; about the plays and musicals that had people lining up before the Great White Way became such a fabulously famous, and too often colorless, invalid. Some people can be content, playing bingo and paying rent. Not Rick McKay. In 1981, he moved to New York, wishing for a theatrical future and hoping to document the past. Armed with a camera, a potent Rolodex and unbridled perseverance, he set out to find as many Broadway legends as he could to question them about one thing: Was there really a Golden Age of Broadway? And if so, what happened to it? He wrote letters. A few responded. One --- Gwen Verdon --- dropped by his apartment, where McKay interviewed her with his hand-held camera. (It became the final interview Verdon did before her death.) For five years, McKay persevered, interviewing whomever he could wherever he could, going to England to chase down Jeremy Irons, traveling nearly six hours by bus to meet Maureen Stapleton at her New England home --- and to be greeted at the door with "Who the f--- is that?" Whenever the money ran out, McKay hosted fundraising parties and sold his personal possession; his piano went for $1,700. He eventually ended up with 250 hours of footage that he edited (on the Murphy bed of his teeny apartment) down to the 111-minute documentary, "Broadway: The Golden Age." A valentine that's as historical as it is entertaining, Broadway pays homage to the parade that passed by ... and to those folk who are today passed by and to those who have passed on to the Great Green Room in the Sky. The flick is crammed with towering theatrical talents from the '40s through the '60s ... a veritable Playbill of four-star names, from A (Abbott, George) to Z (Ziemba, Karen), with a middle stage crammed with 98 more, including Julie Harris and Carol Burnett and John Raitt and Elaine Stritch and Shirley MacLaine and Angela Lansbury and Chita Rivera and John Raitt and Kander and Ebb and Comden and Green and Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim and ... well, you get the idea. But "Broadway: The Golden Age" is so much more than a talking-head talkfest of 100 sterling legends reminiscing about those 24-karat decades. The film's divided into several "chapters" (such as "The First Time," "Getting the Job," "The Days of Out-of-Town Previews"), and McKay intercuts memories with music, rare archival footage, home movies, newsreels, videotapes and film clips and theatrical trailers. Some of the footage is exceedingly rare: I gasped when viewing Laurette Taylor in her 1938 screen test for David O. Selznick, the only existing sound film she ever made. I cried while watching Bob Fosse assisting his then-wife Gwen Verdon in a "Whatever Lola Wants" run through from "Damn Yankees." Ben Gazzara as Brick in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" mesmerized me in footage everyone (including the actor) was certain did not exist. The stories told are passionate and priceless. Some will break your heart. Some will make you weep. Others amuse, few annoy. The actors talk about first jobs, missed roles, big breaks, empty stomachs and emptier pockets, disappointment and despair, being hired and fired, hope and honor, famous co-stars (and sometimes bedmates), out-of-town try-outs and the days when performers didnąt need microphones. They talk from their hearts and souls as only show folk do. Ben Gazzara talks about his alcohol-sodden affair with Elaine Stritch and muses (in a most loving way): "You'd look at her and think, 'How much can one person drink?'" Later, when most of the then-struggling artists remember the days of hanging out at Walgreens, Stritch barks: "I never went through that drugstore period,. I went to saloons." (Make sure you stay until the very end of the film: Stritch gets the last comment ... and what a doozy it is!) Marian Seldes cites Laurette Taylor, Kim Stanley and Geraldine Page as the theater's three finest actresses. Shirley MacLaine reveals that she became the first Broadway star to utter a certain scatological four-letter word on stage (when she dropped her hat during the now-legendary "Steam Heat" number of "The Pajama Game) ... and how she survived on lemonade ... with the lemons, water and sugar, free for the taking at the Automat. Julie Harris openly weeps when she recalls seeing Ethel Waters on stage for the first time. Carol Burnett recalls how she and her three roommates had so little money that they shared a "rehearsal" dress whoever got the job paid for its dry cleaning. Some of the stories didn't make the cut (McKay is working on a sequel, "Broadway: The Next Generation.")Here's one for starters: McKay remembers chatting with Charles Nelson Reilly. "He told me that the night before our interview, he had watched Julie Harris in "The Member of the Wedding," Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in "The Fourposter," Laurence Olivier in "The Entertainer" and Laurette Taylor in "The Glass Menagerie," McKay recalls. "Charlie said, `Those films are clearer than my tape of `All About Eve,' because they're up here --- and then he touched his head. That's what you must tell people `that they will never forget what happens to them in the theater.'"

FIRST OF ALL, LET ME SAY THAT I HAD NEVER HEARD OF RICK MCKAY OR THIS FILM UNTIL I HAPPENED TO SEE IT AT A FILM FESTIVAL!

Since then, I have seen it in 5 theaters in 3 cities, and each time the audience laughed, and the audience wept, and the audience did not want to leave the Q and A with the filmmaker...this is because THE FILM IS MAGIC AND MR. MCKAY IS CHARISMATIC!

So NOW you should buy the DVD...you can see the film, and then see it again with Mr. McKay's commentary...from his living room to yours!

I should know, I bought 24 of the DVD's for gifts!

But don't listen to me, listen to what the FILM CRITICS have to say:

New York Film Critics Online - Best Documentary of 2004
The Hollywood Reporter - Best Documentary of 2004
The Washington Times - Top Ten Films of 2004
The Washington Times - Top Ten Documentaries of 2004
Jeffrey Lyons/NBC - Top Ten Films of 2004
Houston Voice - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#1)
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#2)
Southern Voice - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#1)
IndieWire.com - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#2)
DVD Authority - Top Ten DVDs of 2004 (#3)
Moda Magazine - Top Ten Documentaries of 2004

All of these film critics and all of the audiences cannot be wrong. BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!! You will be SO GLAD YOU DID!!!

Meanwhile, I cannot wait until I can BUY the sequels, BROADWAY THE GOLDEN AGE PART II, and BROADWAY: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Award winning documentary filmmaker Rick McKay, who made the definate profile of Elaine Stritch for PBS's "Egg" series, has created one of the most illuminating, exhilaring and memorable movies of the year. After World War II America's great playwrights were writing their best plays, Ethel Merman was in her prime and talented aspiring actors and actresses flocked to New York to study acting with dreams of making it on Broadway. McKay captures the heady period with brilliantly selected rare archival footage and intimate interviews with over 100 theater legends.

McKay is obviously knowledgable about theater history and show business lore and demonstrates a remarkable rapport with his subjects.

The interviews are charming, revealing and from the heart, and the actors certainly know how to tell a good story. McKay has shaped the documentary into segments which address coming to New York, auditions, the impact on young actors of such unique theater stars as Laurette Taylor, Marlon Brando, and Kim Stanley (with exceptionally rare performance footage of each) the late night hangouts, and a myriad of others which zip by. McKay brings to life a vibrant, magical world that has changed forever.

Unlike the PBS series "Broadway The American Musical" which was a conventional textbook-like TV documentary, "Broadway The Golden Age" captures the flavor of a unique period in American history (and reminds me of Jan Morris's wonderful book "Manhattan '45")in a highly original style. It makes you laugh (especially at Shirley MacLaine's jest at her own expense), applaud (for John Raitt's "Solioquy") and cry (for a lost era and golden age).

What a perfect Christmas present! It's what I'm giving this season.

I saw this film in New York in June and loved it then and I just saw a press screener of the DVD - it is amazing what the filmmaker has done. In addition to being incredibly entertaining as a film, this is destined to be an invaluable historic reference. There are dozens of interviews with actors giving us a first person account of Broadway's Golden Age by those who were there, creating it.

The DVD has at leat 30 minutes of interviews with the cast of the upcoming (I hope soon) "Next Generation" including: Betty Buckley, Jason Alexander, Doug Sills, John Barrowman, Cady Huffman and Daisy Eagan. There are also deleted scenes, one has Marian Seldes on Katharine Cornell - I cannot imagine how this was not in the original film. The movie could have been twice as long and still held up. It's also fun to see the alternate ending on the DVD and the red carpet footage of the NY and LA openings. This is not a rental, you will want to own it and watch it when you want to be entertained, or inspired, or moved, or laugh. This film is incredible.

Unlike so many quickly forgotten documentaries this sterling entry is a memorable experience, both educational and fun for anyone with whatever degree of interest/curiosity in the history of Broadway musicals and its Golden Age talent. Since so many of these celebrities are at the age where they soon might not be with us, it is a godsend to have their thoughts on their craft captured for posterity.

This is the type of film where one viewing is not sufficient to savor all the flavor and nuances of the star-studded personalities captured in interview by the filmmaker.

I think "Broadway: The Golden Age" is essential viewing for students of theatre and of the American arts in general, and certainly for any aspiring actor, director, designer or person who has found the theatre to be the source of inspiration, excitement, revelation, reflection, and consolation it can so often be.

I happened to watch "CBS Sunday Morning" today, on which there was a piece about the trend of musicals such as "Mamma Mia", "Movin' Out", and "Good Vibrations" which, though artful in themselves, amount to little more than thinly threaded
pastiches of music by one composer or performer/performers. The feature noted the passing of the traditional book musical. . . the kind which "Broadway: The Golden Age" includes in its chronicle of New York theatre in the '40's and '50's, which was, indeed, a golden age. As someone who makes his living in the theatre, and who arrived in New York just as that golden age was ending, I was touched and moved by Rick McKay's carefully wrought
recounting of the era through the words of the people who lived it. . . who created it. I was also particularly struck by the interviews with Jerry Ohrbach (also featured in "CBS Sunday Morning's" end of year tributes this morning), who recently passed away, and who was in the first live Broadway musical I saw: Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach's "Promises, Promises", which boasted a chorus of women that included Ann Reinking, Baayork Lee, and Donna McKechnie, each of whom has made her indelible mark on the theatre in the years since then.

In addition, the audtition/screen test footage of Laurette Taylor alone was worth every penny spent (though truth be told, my DVD was a recent opening night present - but one I'd be happy to have bought for myself and fully intend now to purchase for others): I now understand what it is people have always tried to recount about their experiences seeing Ms. Taylor live on stage. The footage included in the documentary is absolutely priceless.

But "Broadway: The Golden Age" is filled with such gems -- and is a masterpiece of compilation and editing. One suspects some sort of sequel would be entirely possibe, and I, for one, am hopeful there will be one. I was riveted from first to last.

Thanks to the producers of "Broadway: The Golden Age". It is a valuable addition to the annals of our cultural history and heritage.

I love this movie! I rented it first from Netflix and then instantly came here to buy it for everyone I know. And I am not alone - over 1,000 different, registered Netflix renters have voted it approximately 4 **** out of 5 - amazingly high for Netflix!

It is so moving. As someone else already said, everytime I see it I see somehing new. It is so RICH with detail, history, humor, passion and great vintage pefromance. It is so inspiring. Kim Stanley, Laurette Taylor, Brando, Shirley MacLaine, Angela Lansbury, John Raitt - lost footage of all of them. What more could anyone want?

And I could not agree more with the reviewer below. Dismiss the guy who keeps posting negative reviews and changing his name. It is clearly the same (not very orginal) guy and I am sure his multiple postings with different aliases will be removed by Amazon.

All my friends love the film and the Broadway webistes, chatrooms and newsgroups are going nuts about it. One of them just listed the awards the film has won in the last week of 2004:

New York Film Critics Online - Best Documentary of 2004
The Hollywood Reporter/Robert Osborne - Best Documentary of 2004
The Washington Times - Top Ten Films of 2004
The Washington Times - Top Ten Documentaries of 2004 (only film to make both lists)
Jeffrey Lyons/NBC - Top Ten Films of 2004
Houston Voice - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#1)
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#2)
Southern Voice - Top Ten Films of 2004 (#1)
IndieWire.com - Brandon Judell's Top Ten Films of 2004 (#2)
DVD Authority - Top Ten DVDs of 2004 (#3)
Susan Granger - Moda Magazine - Top Ten Documentaries of 2004

As Rolling Stone Magazine said, this is one for the time capsule. I guess thousands of fans AND critics can't be wrong! Buy this movie before Amazon wises up and raises the price. At this low price it is a steal. Not to mention the 90 minutes of bonus material. You will watch it again and again. I have.

I saw this film at Dahlonega and felt an instant connection to the generation just before mine. Rick 's McKay presents the story in the words of the players and with skillful editing and vision transforms them from mere icons to living historians of the stage and screen. Give this DVD to someone you love and take time to watch it with them! You will laugh and cry together and both come away richer.

First of all Mr. Miller has completely missed the point of this film. Mr. McKay's interviews with over one hundred of theatre's most celebrated and talented artists serves as a uniquely candid and unprecedentedly comprehensive look at a time in American history that will never be seen again.

With or without Mr. McKay's personal insights in the film, it stands on it's own as an important historical document that does in fact reveal never before seen footage and shares first hand accounts from the people that actually lived it; people who paved the way for the new generation. One of the most important things this document provides is the opportunity to witness some of the most groundbreaking yet regrettably forgotten theatrical performers of this century. People like Laurette Taylor and Kim Stanley, who through their work decades ago are still influencing the new generations of actors, who sadly don't know they ever existed.

I do hope Mr. Miller will watch the sequel, Broadway: The Next Generation. If he does so, he will see that Mr. McKay does not see theatre as a dying art form, just a changing one.