VIDEO FLASHBACK: It's Groundhog Day! Celebrate With Robert Morse and Rudy Vallee

By: Feb. 02, 2016
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It's Groundhog Day! One of America's oldest and weirdest traditions, first popularized in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. If the town's official groundhog emerges from his burrow on this day and sees his shadow, causing him to retreat back, we're supposed to be in for six more weeks of winter. If not, get set to enjoy an early spring.

Theatre fans have certainly had Groundhog Day on their minds recently, with the announcement that Broadway's Andy Karl will be starring in the Old Vic's premier production of the musical based on the 1993 film GROUNDHOG DAY, slated for Broadway in 2017.

But at the moment, Broadway's reining groundhog tribute remains Frank Loesser's song, "Grand Old Ivy," from the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. In the original Broadway production, it was young Robert Morse, as eager corporate up-and-comer J. Pierrepont Finch, who sang the spirited college football fight song, cheering on the team called the Groundhogs, with the company president, Rudy Vallee's J.B. Biggley.

Click the photo below to see them recreate the Broadway number in the musical's movie version.

It wasn't mere coincidence that Rudy Vallee, the most famous musical heartthrob of the 1920s and 30s was singing a college fight song in his first Broadway appearance since starring in GEORGE WHITE'S SCANDALS OF 1936. In 1930, Vallee's recording of "The Maine Stein," the fight song for the University of Maine, was the #1 song in the country for eight straight weeks!

So when Broadway audiences in 1961 saw the former popular music idol crooning of college days, it brought back nostalgic memories of this classic hit:



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