Photo Flash: Herman & Channing at Words & Music Screening

Carol Channing, Jerry Herman, Amber Edwards and the Actors' Fund's Joe Benincasa recently attended a screening of Edwards' film Words and Music at the Camelot Theatre in Palm Springs.

The new NJN/PBS documentary - Words and Music by Jerry Herman - chronicles the life and career of one of Musical Theater's iconic figures. "Words and Music by Jerry Herman" is to be broadcast on PBS next season.

The 90-minute film by award-winning filmmaker Edwards, of NJN Public Television, chronicles Jerry Herman's rise from witty off-Broadway revues during the 1950s, to his first Broadway successes in the 1960s ( Milk and Honey, followed by Hello, Dolly! and Mame), through the 1970s (Dear World, Mack and Mabel, and The Grand Tour  to his 1983 triumph La Cage Aux Folles, which also made social and political history. The star-studded "supporting cast" including Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury, Charles Nelson Reilly, Marge Champion, Arthur Laurents, Michael Feinstein, Charles Strouse, Fred Ebb, George Hearn, Phyllis Newman, Francine Pascal, Musical Director Donald Pippin, and theater historians Miles Kreuger and Ken Bloom.

Nearly five years in the making, the film incorporates a remarkable collection of photographs and archival footage (much of it never seen in public before) including Carol Channing doing the original Hello, Dolly ! title song; Donald Pippin's personal Super-8 films of Angela Lansbury in Mame and Dear World; numbers from Mack and Mabel; scenes from La Cage; as well as film of the college musical Jerry wrote while at University of Miami.

Photos by Maile Klein

Joe Benincasa, Carol Channing, Jerry Herman and Amber Edwards with screening guests

Amber Edwards, Carol Channing, Jerry Herman and Joe Benincasa