1776 in 1976 at Melody Top

This website is so fantastic! Thanks so much for posting it!!!

Ross Martin was such a fine actor and gone way too soon.

I was studying at Oxford when this production was playing, but I did manage to see Forum with Arte Johnson, Bells Are Ringing with Rita Moreno, and Shenandoah with John Raitt that season nevertheless.

Sigh.

Those were the days.

I saw a production of 1776 that was presented by the Marriott Theater (in the round) in Lincolnshire, Illinois during the summer of 2002. Yes, the piece is a challenge to stage in an arena-type environment because there is a long stretch in the book that has no singing and no dancing. In my humble opinion, performers on stage in the round always need to keep moving, even ever so slightly, to keep an audience's full attention. That's not easy to do when given a long book scene without musical numbers. The director of this production used constant, natural movement by allowing the cast to move freely throughout this unique space, including aisles and walkways behind all four seating sections. At the Marriott Theater, as was the case at Melody Top, the final tableau of our Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence while bells chimed was a moment of great emotion. Here's a link to some prop and production pictures used at the Marriott Theater 16 years ago. Love the cute pic of Mary Ernster! She recently performed on Broadway in WAR PAINT:

1776 at the Marriott Theater in 2002

On July 4th 1976, I was serving as a young inexperienced tech director in my first year of summer stock at the New London Barn Players in New Hampshire. Of course "1776" was the show we were doing that week. We had somehow borrowed every gong and chime and giant cow bell in the county and stashed them all on the theater's back porch for the climax of the show.

But at 3pm on July 4th that Bicentennial Year, all the church bells in the entire country started chiming in celebration for our country that had just survived Watergate and Viet Nam and was entering a new hopeful chapter. The minute we heard those chimes we all raced to our back porch and started clanging on every bell and gong in our arsenal. Sure, the country was divided and bigoted and tribalized then just as it is now, but we pounded on those bells with tears in our eyes because we were so proud of what our country COULD be, if given the chance.

As a way of observing the 40th anniversary of Ross Martin's far-too-soon passing on July 3, 1981 and celebrating the Fourth of July in America, I have made some updates to a page on my "Memories of Melody Top" website about a production of 1776 from the summer of 1976. In addition to publishing the scan of a window card created by Melody Top, I have also shared three audio clips from the show: "Piddle, Twiddle and Resolve," "The Lees of Old Virginia" and "He Plays the Violin." There are also larger versions of eight production pictures previously uploaded to my site. Of interest to fans of EVITA is that Robb Alton played Richard Henry Lee at Melody Top. Four years later, Alton would be cast as Peron in Chicago's sit-down production of EVITA, directed by Hal Prince, which would eventually become the musical's second national tour. Didi Hitt, Alton's wife, played Martha Jefferson at Melody Top; she, too, would also join the EVITA company as a Person of Argentina. Click on the link in this post to see everything I have described, as well as newspaper reviews and backstage shots.

1776 at Milwaukee's Melody Top

Thanks to the 1960s TV series of ''The Wild, Wild West,'' I was a big fan of Ross Martin, so it's cool to find out that he played John Adams in ''1776.'' But here's another fun fact: His ''Wild West'' co-star, Robert Conrad, ALSO was playing John Adams in ''1776'' at various Midwest theaters that same Bicentennial summer. I once had the honor of interviewing Conrad, and asked him to pick his proudest career achievements. And he said playing Pasquinel in the 1978 TV miniseries ''Centennial'' and getting rave reviews for starring in ''1776.''

Updated On: 7/6/21 at 12:49 AM

Chis Gronendaal was absolutely spellbinding when he replaced Victor Garber in the original SWEENEY TODD. Whatever happened to him?

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