Stage 67's TV musicals (Sondheim, Bacharach, Bock/Harnick, etc)

those sound great eric. i've never heard of them.

who wrote the lyrics for that? I've always wanted to hear it

but no--I'm not sure, in the 60s there were a fair number of original tv musicals (50s too I guess)--Cole Porter's Aladdin springs to mind too

I'd still be curious to find out who had the great idea to ask sondheim to do EPrimrose? some fan of Anyone Can Whistle who was hiding at ABC?

I'm probably wrong

You should post it to your AWESOME blog--

E

Hell let's try to get EPrimrose on official DVD first (there is a bootleg seller who sells On the Flipside but I haven't btohered yet though I'm curious) I guess all of them are kinescopes which is part of the problem (the truman capote one is on DVD tho)

All that was saved was indeed a kinescope--that's what you can view at the Museum of TV and that's what the bootlegs are made of. Sondheim even said in the Sondheim review that he doubted there'd be any commercial potential for it sadly because of that.

I'm not sure why a colour taped show (and you're right--it was) would only be saved that way though I know videotape was very expensive back then so often reused immediately after and the show was low budget (ABC's All My Children was aired on colour videotape from when it premiered in 1970 but only a handful of episodes from pre 1976 survive and all of them are B&W kinescopes)


(From the Sondheim guide http://www.sondheimguide.com/television.html): ABC Stage 67: "Evening Primrose"
Presented in a series of entertainment specials on the ABC network, this original musical had a teleplay by James Goldman (based on the short story by John Collier) and songs by Stephen Sondheim. It was televised on November 16, 1966 in color, but all known copies originate from a black-and-white kinescope of the broadcast. For more information go to Evening Primrose. (60 minutes)


It is very frustrating though of course back then no one knew people would kill to see it in full colour 40 years later
E

Updated On: 5/4/07 at 12:53 AM

Wasn't the Cinderella DVD released taken from a kinescope?

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I just wish they would release it, color or no color. Does anyone know anyting about the quality of the surviving kinescopes for a possible DVD release?

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Yeah apparantlyt he Collier estate is *notoriously* tight. (Come to think of it so is James Goldman with things her husband wrote, I wonder if that could be another barier). Like I said at least one Stage 67 episode (the Truman Capote) has made it to DVD so I guess stranger things are possible but it seems like it would be way too much work for the small profit that could come.

The CD was announced a few times between 2000 and Sondheim' 75th Anniversary--and is still labeled as part of that huge box set that was once again due this Spring but I have no hopes of seeing. Still I see a CD release as much more likely.

(I've never even heard of attempts for a DVD release---unlike say Image's attempts to release the 1976 Japanese video of Pacific Overtures--so assumed everyone just considered it too much of a lost cause)

Bk is your copy of On the Flipside a kinescope or a full color video? i know a TV bootlegger (though of course he doesn't call himself that) sells one on a prominent TV website for 20 bucks but that's the only Stage 67 he has (he sells it on DVD). I always wonder if it had any part in Bacharach/David writing Promises Promises. I remember trying to get Primetime Musicals when it came out through my CD store with no luck (that was just before I started ordering most music online)--and then forgot about the album. I'll have to keep an eye out for copies.

Either way it had a commercially released soundtrack (now available remastered from Japan along with their other Bacharach remasters) no doubt because of the names involved--Sondheim wasn't a name when he did his. The songs are great, and oft recorded of course but as a big fan of Sondheim's rare underscores (the Stavisky soundtrack is a fave of mine--as are the two suites from plays included on Unheard Sondheim--for me the highlights of that album) I love the clarinet based instrumentals used--to eerie effect--that he did with orchestrator Norman Paris (sp?) and they deserve to be heard more.

JohnBoy it is insane to believe but it's very true--I know you have no reason to trust me but the sad state that it's only been preserved on kinescope has even been mentioned several times by Steve. Like I said soap operas (even when some, like ABC's had switched to being videotapes) would reuse their videotapes over and over, erasing each episode up to the mid/late *70s*! Key episode would be preserved by the MUCH cheaper kinescope format and the videotape reused--and it seems this is how many low budget primetime shows like Stage 67 were preserved as well up to 1970 or so.

E

Updated On: 5/4/07 at 04:00 AM

I know that they used to reuse video tape. Many shows were completely destroyed because of that practice. What I find hard to believe,is that anyone was still copying shows by placing a movie camera in front of a television monitor in the mid-1960s, when the show was already on videotape. I believe you, it just makes no sense. Videotape was not more expensive than film! We had a reel-to-reel videotape machine at my high school in the 1960s. I never much cared about it, but perhaps I should transfer my audio of the show. I got it out (the tape is almost transparent) and had a bit of listen, and it really sounds pretty bad, as you can hear:

http://media.putfile.com/03---Track-3-82

Updated On: 5/4/07 at 02:12 PM

Back in the 1980s, the bootleg record label "Blue Pear" released an album with the soundtracks of several made for television original musicals. "The Canterville Ghost" was on it, I recall.

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