Product Details

• Actors: Marlon Brando, Bonnie Franklin, Tammy Grimes, Uta Hagen, Al Hirschfeld
• Directors: Rick McKay
• Format: Cast Recording, Color, Compilation, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: RCA Victor Broadway
• DVD Release Date: November 9, 2004
• Run Time: 111 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000649YA2
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #19,990 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #32 in

  Movies & TV > Musicals & Performing Arts > Broadway > Musicals

• For more information about "Broadway - The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It's not a comprehensive survey of the American musical theater, but Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There is an invaluable and moving salute to the art form composed of interviews with the people who were there in the 1940s through the 1960s. There are too many to list, but they include John Raitt, Angela Lansbury, Hume Cronyn, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Carol Channing, Jerry Orbach, Robert Goulet, Robert Morse (even he's gotten old!), Jerry Herman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Prince. There are also some rare performance clips, such as Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Patricia Morison in Kiss Me Kate, and Angela Lansbury in Mame, as well as more familiar television performances, but very few film versions (for either authenticity or rights reasons). Director Rick McKay's focus, however, is on evocative stills, a few too many shots of the city, and most of all the words from the stars themselves. Fact is, because Broadway shows are a live performance medium, there simply isn't a lot of footage available, which is why it's a treat--no, it's an obligation--that we hear the stories from the people themselves. It's the best way the form will survive. After a bit of a slow start, the interviews cover the culture of Broadway, hanging out at Walgreen's and Sardi's, taking a show on the road, and thoughts about the current generation. (Broadway in this case refers to the location in New York rather than the musical-theater genre, so non-musicals are a major part of the discussion.)

Broadway: The Golden Age had a limited theatrical run in 2004, and there will be inevitable comparisons to Broadway: The American Musical, the six-hour series that played on PBS in the fall of that same year. The PBS series is much longer (especially counting the DVDs' bonus interviews) and unlike The Golden Age, it attempts to be a comprehensive survey of 100 years of American musical theater. The ambition is admirable, but often hard to live up to. The Golden Age offers more rare footage, and a more powerful sense of nostalgia throughout the interviews. On the downside, there's no real structure to the film other than grouping the interviews by random subject, and director McKay relies too much on his own personal experiences as a jumping-off point. But it's a worthwhile, often passionate film that captures a priceless glimpse at a way of life as lived by so many memorable figures whose like will never be seen again. --David Horiuchi

Product Description

Studio: Sony Music Release Date: 11/09/2004

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars words fail me..., January 17, 2005

By	Byron Kolln (the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

229 of 252 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CURTAIN RISES ONCE AGAIN ON THE GOLDEN AGE OF BROADWAY, October 18, 2004

By	Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI)) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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 didn¹t 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.'"

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FILM CRITICS AGREE: Broadway the Golden Age BEST OF 2004!, January 3, 2005

By	Kappie (Kansas) - See all my reviews

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.