Merman performing on 1972 Tony Awards

[zamedy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 8:53am

Great find here for any Merman fan. The entire awards show has been uploaded. The Merm was awarded a special Tony this year. She had to work for it though.. performing some of her biggest hits in a 10-minute tribute to, well, herself. It's a treasure.. and it shows she had a softer, fun, sweeter side that's seldom attributed to her. For perhaps the first time on video, you see Merm perform 'Doing What Comes Naturally' as she first had on stage 26 years earlier. And her 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' gives us an idea of what it must have been like to see her perform that signature tune on the Broadway stage more than a decade earlier. The 'choreography' seems dated by today's standards.. but the emotion she packs into every line.. especially the final bars.. reminds us why she is the legend she is.

Merman tribute starts around the 1:09:00 mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC12nJlqNYE

Updated On: 7/31/13 at 08:53 AM

[Jay94]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 8:59am

Interesting seeing Two Gentlemen of Verona win Best Musical. It seems the audience members were shocked.

Updated On: 7/31/13 at 08:59 AM

[sara]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 9:38am

Thanks so much for that...its a true treasure

[zamedy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 9:43am

You're welcome, Ms. LuPone :)

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 9:46am

MissPoochSmooch seems to have put up all the 1967 through 1975 complete Tony broadcasts, except 1971.

[kyle33nyc]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 10:25am

Thank you for the heads up. I loved getting to see the full Ethel sequence. That she didn't a Tony for her actual work in Gypsy is incomprehensible.

[lovebwy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 4:33pm

FANtastic. What a woman.

[lovebwy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 4:55pm

I'm just curious- I scanned though the show and did not see a performance from Follies. Anyone have any idea why? Or did I just miss it?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 5:23pm

Interesting seeing Two Gentlemen of Verona win Best Musical. It seems the audience members were shocked.

IIRC, FOLLIES had already won seven Tony Awards to VERONA's one for best book.

So, yes, it was a shock.

***

THANK YOU SO MUCH, ZAMEDY, FOR FINDING THAT MERMAN CLIP. You're right: they really made her work for that special award but I'm glad they did! That performance catches her just before her vibrato became a tremolo.

As always, however, TV doesn't quite capture the excitement that was Merman live. I spent years trying to convince students, pointing out that Merman did all of those shows without body mikes, that, in a sense, she gave audiences the thrill that we now get from highly amplified rock 'n' roll. But it always seemed I was asking too much of their imaginations.

As I've said elsewhere, I first saw Merman from the last two seats in the last row of a medium-sized theater. I might as well have been front row center: she was that clear vocally and that much bigger than life!

[zamedy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 9:24pm

You are more than welcome, GavestonPS! I'm so glad I found it myself. Did you happen to see her in GYPSY? I'd love to hear all about it. Private message me with details if you'd like! Fortunately we have several tv recordings of Merm performing 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' (including on this Tony cast, which is perhaps the best performance that was captured on tv). It's unfortunate that her 'Rose's Turn' was never captured on film for the public to see. An audio recording of what's purported to be her final Broadway performance is out there and it is incredible. All of this just goes to show that you cannot judge an actor's portrayal of a role solely on a cast recording.

Updated On: 7/31/13 at 09:24 PM

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 10:02pm

Holy crap, is this great or what? So low-tech, too! The old Tony Awards look like a community theatre ceremony.

[sara]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 10:33pm

I saw her in the Actors fund performance of Gypsy....It was a star studded audience ,I remember Frank Sinatra and Lauren Bacall being there.When Merman made her entrance ,running down the theater aisle everyone stood up and screamed and cheered for her.....it went on for so long it was hard to get the show started.
What the You Tube video captures is how nuanced her performance of Rose's Turn was.What it doesn't capture is how electrifying a performer she was in person.
It was one of those rare moments in the theater when the perfect performer met the perfect role..it was thrilling

[lovebwy]

Posted: 7/31/13 at 11:31pm

sara that his a hell of a memory to have. I wish I had it.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 1:04am

That whole 2-hour show is extraordinary! What a changing of the guard when Richard Rogers can be feted for his work with Lorenz Hart at the same time as Andrew Lloyd Weber and Melvin Van Peebles (not to mention Sondheim) are showing where Broadway and pop music were soon headed. Astonishing to witness Ethel Merman, Alfred Drake and Ruby Keeler share the stage with Ben Vereen and Sandy Duncan.

Thrilling also to see so many luminaries then who are still making a difference on stages today: thinking of Mike Nichols and Joel Grey and Hal Linden.

Perverse that FOLLIES and TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA never even got a slot to perform, but SUPERSTAR, AIN'T SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH, NO NO NANNETTE and Ethel each got 8 or 9 minutes of stage time. I'm sure I watched the '72 Tonys with my family when it first aired, but no-one could know then what a game changer we were witnessing. Can't wait to watch the others on this youtube page.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 7:00am

zamedy, I tried to answer you earlier but the board was jammed.

No, I didn't see Merman in GYPSY; I was only 4 or 5 and lived far from NYC. I did work with Lansbury on it in the mid-1970s and that production remains one of the joys of my life.

But I first (and last) saw Merman on tour in CALL ME MADAM in 1967. She had done ANNIE GET YOUR GUN at Lincoln Center and intended to tour with it, but critics in NYC said she was too old for the part. So she toured with MADAM instead and was brilliant in it!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 7:15am

How odd that FOLLIES did NOT perform, considering they did two numbers from NANETTE and at least 20 minutes from JCS!

It can't be that they wanted to look "modern", or they wouldn't have had Merman do her 20 minutes.

The show was in April and FOLLIES didn't close until July 1. Had Prince simply figured the show was a lost cause financially? It seems like FOLLIES had plenty of numbers that might have boosted the b.o., even when held up against NANETTE.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 7:50am

Wow, Sara. Thank you for that memory.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 7:55am

Her phrasing of the ending of "Make It an Old-Fashioned, Please" also demonstrates her surprising subtlety.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 8:02am

Watching the finale, with the whole world of Broadway singing and swaying and playing banjos to "I-want-to-be-happy-but-I-won't-be-happy-till-I-make-you-happy-too" from No, No Nanette, I was transported back to my 16-year-old self, newly made sophisticated by my memorizing of Sondheim's lyrics from Company and Follies, feeling that Follies was REAL and Nanette was PHONY and the Tonys were PHONY and that Follies was ROBBED.

[best12bars]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 9:04am

I was very disappointed with this Tony telecast not featuring numbers from all the nominated shows. No Follies??

Same thing happened on the '74 Tonys. All these endless (and really boring) tribute medleys, but no number from A Little Night Music, the winner that night.

Bad form.

[Jay94]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 10:06am

There are several glaringly odd things about these early Tony telecasts. I recently watched the '75 ceremony and was shocked by the rather nonchalant way Best Musical was presented halfway through the show, before even best director, book and score. The early shows seemed to also be more focused on the performance aspect of the broadcast with the majority of the '75 ceremony dedicated to tributes to the Winter Garden and the '73 telecast mainly consisting of extended filmed sequences of foreign productions such as West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, The King and I and... The Front Page.

[NoName3]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 4:02pm

Aren't those two unnamed boys backing up Merman in the medley Hal Linden and Larry Blyden?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 7:53pm

^^^ Yes, they are.

Does anyone understand the omission of best musical nominees in the early 1970s? Was there a different presentation philosophy in place at the time?

Michael Bennett's original choreography to "Who's That Woman?" would have stopped the show!

***

PJ, I agree that FOLLIES was most certainly robbed! But being a Busby Berkeley fan even as a teenager, seeing Ruby Keeler in person and still tapping as well as she did was an indescribable thrill!

No, it wasn't art on the scale of FOLLIES, but it sure as hell was entertainment.

(I'm talking about the actual stage show here, not the Tony telecast.)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 8:35pm

I remember thinking that No, No, Nanette was Squaresville, USA and the triumph of Henry Fonda's generation. But looking back, that Superstar performance was from hunger! Had those folks never performed it before? Did they do it as an improv exercise? Give us three things: "Leper!" "Whip" "Lady who doesn't know what to do with her hands!" Okay, go!

Honestly, no wonder Jeff Fenholt descended into alcohol and drugs and Xian conversion

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/1/13 at 8:54pm

^^^ LOL.

NANETTE was indeed "squaresville", but it was squaresville performed with considerable verve! (Still talking about the actual show, not the Tony numbers.)