Broadway Video Database - 1974

After writing a tell-all book about her days in the dance troupe "Barry Nichols and Les Girls", Sybil Wren (Kay Kendall) is sued for libeling her fellow dancer Angele (Taina Elg). A Rashômon (1950)-style narrative presents the story from three points of view. Sybil accuses Angele of having an affair with Barry (Gene Kelly), while Angele insists that it was actually Sybil who was having the affair. Finally, Barry gives his side of the story.

Recording of the 1960 TV broadcast directed by Don Richardson and starring Zero Mostel.

Recording of the 1960 TV broadcast of the S. Ansky play, directed by Sidney Lumet.

An illiterate stooge in a traveling medicine show wanders into a strange town and is picked up on a vagrancy charge.

The sublime adaptation by Jean Cocteau (Orpheus) of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece--in which the true love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast--is a landmark feat of motion picture fantasy, with unforgettably romantic performances by Jean Marais (Orpheus) and Josette Day (Les parents terribles). The spectacular visions of enchantment, desire, and death in Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete) have become timeless icons of cinematic wonder.

The star has injured an ankle, but the show - and inexperienced stage assistant Polly Browne - must go on. Break a leg, kid. And don't let the presence of Hollywood director and talent scout Mr. De Thrill add any pressure. And so begins this colorful tale of theater hopefuls with stars in their eyes and greasepaint in their veins, a work that, under the guidance of director Ken Russell, is not just an affectionate filmization of Sandy Wilson's London/Broadway stage hit but also an homage to the...

It's fiesta time in Vista Del Rio, and that means much musical celebration. It's also a time of global war. So, in the updated plot of this exuberant World War II-era remake of the 1929 Wheeler and Woolsey romp, that means little Vista Del Rio is a jalapen?o hotbed of Axis spies. The agents intend to use a fiesta radio show to send a coded message, a scheme that may be scrambled silly when stumblebums Doc and Wishy stumble onto it. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello play the inept duo in this musical c...

Movies often visit the theme of a mother's love, but few match the poignancy and power of The Sin of Madelon Claudet. Renowned "First Lady of the American Theatre" Helen Hayes makes her Hollywood debut a most memorable one, winning the Best Actress Academy Award® (1930-31) for her portrayal of an abandoned young mother whose devotion to her child and desperate sacrifices to provide for him lead her into harlotry. Hayes's husband Charles MacArthur (The Front Page) provides the screen adaptation o...

A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.

In the opening sequence of The Letter, director William Wyler delivers a primer on film directing: at a rubber plantation, in the tropical funk of a Malaysian night, the heavy stillness is suddenly broken by shots... and a woman with a gun, descending a staircase. She is the wife of the plantation owner, and the dead man is, ahem, not her husband. Holding the gun so securely is Bette Davis, in one of her greatest performances (her acting of a big revelation, late in the film, is still an astound...

In the year before the 1904 St Louis World's Fair, the four Smith daughters learn lessons of life and love, even as they prepare for a reluctant move to New York.

Legendary actress Leslie Caron (An American In Paris) stars as a beautiful French actress struggling to avoid the deadly politics and forbidden passions of Nazi-occupied France.

Fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm come to vivid life in these innovative, narrative stories - Such classics featured are: "The Golden Goose," "The Blue Light," "The Clever Gretel."

Veteran husband-and-wife acting couple, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, reprise their roles from the original Broadway hit, as a couple of workers in a duplicating shop, consigned to spend the rest of their lives there.

The play starred IAN McKELLEN in the title role and featured FAITH BROOK, JAMES CAIRNCROSS, JULIAN CURRY, SUSAN FLEETWOOD and JOHN WOODVINE

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton are ideal as malevolent marrieds Martha and George in first-time-director Mike Nichols’ searing film of Edward Albee’s groundbreaking Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Taylor won her second Academy Award* (and New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and British Film Academy Best Actress Awards). Burton matches her as her emotionally spent spouse. And George Segal and Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Sandy Dennis score as another couple straying into...

A Virginia farmer's son is taken prisoner during the Civil War and he must venture out on the killing fields to find him.

1958 Hallmark Hall of Fame, NBC, telecast.

A "startling, stunning, outrageous [and] breathtaking debut" (Los Angeles Times) from acclaimed writer/director Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs), this Oscar®-winning* comedy combines "pure pell-Mel lunacy [and] wild, ad-lib energy [into an] uproariously funny" (Time) film! Low-rent Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) and his high-strung accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), discover that, with the help of a few gullible investors, they can make more money on a flop than on a...

The five spectacular DVDs contained in this boxed set speak volumes about vision and integrity, fearless instinct, and a passion for discovery. If you think you remember these specials from watching them when they first aired, you'll be astonished how time has only enhanced their vitality. The five DVDs are: My Name is Barbra, Color Me Barbra, and Belle of 14th Street, Barbra Streisand: Happening in Central Park, and Barbra Streisand...And Other Musical Instruments.

New Faces was a musical revue with songs and comedy skits tied together by a quirky plot. It ran on Broadway for nearly a year in 1952 and was then made into a motion picture in 1954. It helped jump start the careers of several young performers including Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostley, Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence, performer/writer Mel Brooks (as Melvin Brooks), and lyricist Sheldon Harnick. The film was basically a reproduction of the stage revue with a thin plot added. The plot involved a producer ...

Bell Telephone Hour Telecasts Performances of Broadway's leading ladies Shirley Jones & Florence Henderson. Recorded between 1960-1966.

The famed June 15, 1953 television special brought together two of the greatest leading ladies Broadway has ever known. The highlight of the program is Merman and Martin's 13-minute duet medley, where they sing the songs that made them famous, plus much more. On their own, Merman sings two numbers and Martin performs a brilliant comedy routine about changes in fashion over the first half of the 20th century. 27 min.

A musical evening with legendary Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli. Recorded in 1964 at the London Palladium.

Dorothy and Toto travel back to the land of Oz where they arrive just in time to help their old friends fend off an invasion of magic green elephants. Voice characterizations are performed by a number of stars including Liza Minnelli Ethel Merman and Danny Thomas

Written by Emmy Award®-winning playwright Loring Mandel, Particular Men recalls what might be considered the most significant event of man’s entire history—the introduction of nuclear weaponry. Although fictitious, Mandel’s story may bring to mind some of the events that took place at Los Alamos, New Mexico (where the Manhattan Project was carried out from 1943 to 1945) and during subsequent Atomic Energy Commission proceedings concerning questions of "national security." Starring Golden Globe A...

The title for this play is taken from a little known nursery rhyme, which involves a game between mother and child. The drama opens in the elegant reception room of a clinic where five women await a first reunion with their children from who they have been separated for two months. As the scene proceeds, their discomfort escalates; the tension, now palpable, suggest there are more complicated issues at play. It seems the children have been participants in an unusual experiment - never fully reve...

Under pressure to reaffirm their marriage vows, two middle aged people explore their dreams and the present direction of their lives. "Infinitely perceptive and deeply touching," (Newsday), this play by Robert Anderson features a stellar cast including Emmy-winners Richard Crenna and Susan Clark, Emmy-nominees Irene Tedrow and Harold Gould, and Norma Crane.

This rollicking musical is set in Paris shortly after 1900. Full of chance meetings, mistaken identities, little deceits and big lies, this is a delightful French soufflé with bouncy music, witty lyrics, and plenty of laughs. Starring Max Wright (All That Jazz) and Emmy andTony-nominee Charlotte Rae (Bananas), this show was taped before a live audience in New York City.

D.H. Lawrence's "The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd" is a naturalistic drama drwn from Lawrence's memories of his parents' turbulent marriage. Set in pre-World War I England, the play centers on the conflict between a coarse, blustering coal miner and his refined, working-class wife. Stars Oscar-nominee Geraldine Fitzgerald (Wuthering Heights, Arthur).

By Paul Zindel. Set in a research laboratory that embodies the mechanical, detached attitudes of the 20th century science, this play tells the poignant story of a friendless, simple scrubwoman (Ruth White) and a dolphin who stubbornly refuses to talk to anyone but her. Despite the earnest attempts of her supervisor to indocrinate her, she cannot understand the cold, intellectual atmosphere. Secretly, she and the dolphin become friends and together strike a blow for love and understanding that ba...

Joe Saul, a veteran circus performer is slowly being destroyed by the realization that he will die without having fathered a child. In an act of extraordinary sacrifice and compassion, his wife, Mordeen, takes desperate measures to save him. John Steinbeck's classic play is brilliantly acted by a fantastic cast, lead by four-time Emmy-winner Colleen Dewhurst (Murphy Brown) and Tony-winner Myron McCormick (South Pacific). Features music by Tony-winner Will Holt. Black and White.

In this adaptation of the Ronald Ribman play, 11th century England is a bloodied land, embattled and beset by hordes of invading Danes and disputatious nobles. The vacillating King Ethelred is drained of the decisive initiative he needs to save his throne and reputation. With exquisite lighting and liberal use of close shots, this production conveys the claustrophobic miasma of fear and violence of a period when lives were undoubtedly nasty, brutish, and short. Features an exceptional cast, incl...

Husband and wife Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson star as a 38-year-old truck driver and a weary cigarette girl from a nightclub who elope and discover they know very little about each other in this bittersweet 1954 Broadway comedy. The mama's boy's domineering mother gives them no peace or privacy on their honeymoon and soon the marriage turns into the eternal triangle--with his mother as the "other woman."

Tony Award-winner Fritz Weaver and Emmy-winner Nancy Marchand (Livia in The Sopranos)star in Eugene O'Neill's "A Touch of the Poet." Set in a shabby tavern outside Boston in 1828, the play centers on Cornelius Melody (Weaver), a proud Irishman who clings to memories of European gentility. The play was conceived by O'Neill - regarded by many as America's greatest dramatist - as part of a nine-play chronicle spanning 175 years in the life of an American family. LIke other O'Neill works such as "A ...

For Faye Dunaway, Hogan's Goat by William Alfred "was the play that led to everything." "Everything" was Bonnie and Clyde, which brought her instant stardom. With this television production Ms. Dunaway returned to the role she originated at The American Place Theatre in 1965, that of Kathleen Stanton, of which she said, "Emotionally, I'm very close to Kathleen Stanton--this sensual and spiritual struggle of a woman of good birth, convent-bred, yet dominated by her senses." The play revolves arou...

Is a sensitive and mysterious poet really an IRA gunman in hiding? Set in a Dublin tenement in the 1920's, The Shadow of a Gunman was the first part of Sean O'Casey's celebrated "Dublin Trilogy." Equal parts comedy and tragedy, this classic play is brilliantly performed by a stellar cast including Frank Converse, and Academy Award-winner Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Mr. Holland's Opus).

In homage to the heyday of American comedy, George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner's satire takes on 1929's Tin Pan Alley. Its main characters are a gullible lyricist and a composer who claims as his big hit a ditty called "Paprika... the Spice of My Life." Look for composer Stephen Sondheim as a wisecracking pianist in his acting debut! With Susan Sarandon, Estelle Parsons, Jack Cassidy, Lee Meredith, and Burt Shevelove.

This 1967 program, which preceded The Graduate, clearly demonstrates the early genius of Dustin Hoffman. The past and present co-exist in Maxwell Anderson's 1930's play when a disappointed invnetor unleashes his latest gadget - a "star wagon" - that will return its driver to any desired point in time. The time machine gives him a chance to revamp his life. In an especially vivid characterization, a very young Dustin Hoffman portrays the inventor's muttering stooge. Also stars actor, comedian, an...

Dramatizing a compacted group of memories passing over several years, Arthur Miller's vivid comedy-drama portrays the nature of life during America's Great Depression. The emphasis is on mood and characterization as Miller draws on his own personal experience to evoke what the 1930s were like for workers to whom a job--any job--was everything.

Henrik Ibxsen's tale of an aging builder reaching for love, while clinging to a career on the vergeo fo collapse is astonishing for its power. This outstanding production stars E.G. Marshall, Lois Smith, Phyllis Love and Fred Stewart.

Adapted by master playwright Arthur Miller from Henrik Ibsen's groundbreaking 1882 play, An Enemy of the People is a scathing indictment of a corrupt society. An idealistic doctor, played by 1966 Emmy-winner James Daly, discovers that the medicinal springs- source of a small Norwegian town's wealth and fame--are in fact poisoned. "Few dramas... clamor with as much present-day social relevance," declared Variety. Veteran Broadway, screen, and television actress Kate Reid plays the doctor's indomi...

Philip Hayes Dian's play is about an uprooted black family from the South, living in Chicago at the start of the civil rights movement.

Walter Matthau heads the cast of this television recreation of Clifford Odets' 1935 hit Broadway play, the first full-length work performed on the commercial stage by the legendary Group Theatre. This portrait of a Jewish family in a Bronx tenement perfectly captures the spirit of the Depression years, and is suffused with details of character and place that combine to be affecting even now. The Bergers, burdened by financial difficulties, have taken in a boarder, Moe Axelrod (Matthau), who lost...

Written in 1811, shortly before the author’s suicide, Heinrich Von Kleist's The Prince of Homburg is a strangely haunting drama about a Prussian nobleman who, in disobeying military orders, is sentenced to death, but nevertheless defeats the invading Swedish forces. Von Kleist transforms this incident into an exploration of reality and dream, passion and dissemblance, cowardice and bravado. Written as if by the very spirit of poetry, it represents an exuberance in the triumphs of life. This hith...

In My Heart's in the Highlands, an aspiring poet (Matthau) and his young son - financially impoverished, but rich in dreams and generous of spirit - struggle to survive while never ceasing to care for the well being of their fellow man. Also starring Eddie Hodges.

In Once Around the Block, a screenwriter with a reputation as a lady's man offers advice to a young writer on how he too can be highly appealing the the opposite sex, yielding some rather suprising results. Starring Oscar-winner Walter Matthau(The Odd Couple), Larry Hagman and Orson Bean.

A surrealistic mixture of reality and imagination, Feasting with Panthers takes place in the life, mind, memory, and vision of Oscar Wilde while imprisoned in England’s Reading Gaol during the late Victorian Era. Through flashbacks and fast-forwards, the play presents a dramatic, flowing portrait of an era, and of a man whose genius and vitality live on in his own words. Created by Adrian Hall and Richard Cumming especially for Providence’s Trinity Square Repertory Company, Feasting with Panther...

Set in a ghostly burg on the verge of disappearing, a place where the only movie house closed eight years ago, this adaptation of Lanford Wilson's play explores a community's reaction to rape, lies and murder. The plot revolves around the sexual assault of a teenage girl and an unrelated murder trial in the town of Eldritch. Wilson's innovative use of overlapping dialogue makes the people of the community the real focus of the play.

A provocative, emotion-packed drama about race relations in an all-white suburban community, this play depicts the confrontaion between an upper-class white couple and a black couple from Harlem who plan to buy their expensive suburban home. In negotiating the sale, all four parties learn a little more about each other...and a lot about their own latent prejudices. A stellar cast - including Oscar-nominee and 2-time Emmy-winner Cicely Tyson (Sounder), 3-time Emmy-winner Jane Wyatt (Father Knows ...