Filming Productions

I hope this isn't a dumb question; it's a very simple one, but I don't know that much about the workings of professional shows. It's basically this: Are all shows filmed in their entirety at some point? These days we see clips from just about everything by way of advertisement, so I've assumed that the whole thing has been filmed for the archives, the production company or what-have-you. And sort of a second question: If they are filmed, then what happens to the tape? I saw someone mention on another thread that Lincoln Center has complete tapes of a lot of shows in their archive.

My particular interest is in older shows - it so happens that the OBC of my top favorite show, 'The Sound of Music,' is practically the only one I've never seen any footage of, and that doesn't make sense to me. When I watched the R&H segment of 'Broadway: The American Musical' they had clips from most of their other shows, including the oldest one, 'Oklahoma!' Why wouldn't they film the last one in a long line of successful shows if they'd done it with all the others?

Anyway, just hoping someone could enlighten me a bit...oh, and if you ever see footage of the Sound of Music OBC, please let me know.

Unfortunately, the footage you've seen of those old R&H musicals came from old TV shows where the cast performed numbers from their shows or a medley.

The only known film of a full performance of a R&H musical is of the London production of SOUTH PACIFIC with Mary Martin. It was professionally filmed in black and white, on stage but with no audience. Decent copies of it can be found via the bootleg circuit.

To answer your question regarding the Lincoln Center Archives... not ALL shows are filmed and when they are, sometimes this filming is done after the original cast is no longer in the show. Also, Lincoln Center Archives did not begin archiving shows until the mid-70's. Everything before that survives only in the memory of those who saw the shows.

One more R&H show may exist in a filmed or videotaped version of the original production. In the early 1950s, a tour of the original production of Oklahoma! went to Europe, with members of the national tour cast and with Celeste Holm as Ado Annie for at least a few weeks of the tour. In Berlin, a performance was telecast live onstage. In Germany, they're generally very good about taking care of those sorts of things so it seems quite possible that a tape of this survives.