Now THIS is a party I would like to be invited to this summer at the beach. Who do you spy? The great Eddie Funk shared this amazing home movie with me and asked about whether it was Soupy Sales at the beginning. But, I am 99% sure it is lyricist Adolph Green, of Comden & Green, who wrote WONDERFUL TOWN, ON THE TOWN, etc., on Broadway, and SINGING IN THE RAIN and many other screen plays for Hollywood. They are both in my new film, Broadway: BEYOND the Golden Age as well as BGA. I interviewed them many times - and Betty (Comden - his writing partner) is on the other YouTube video at Roddys house, maybe Memorial Day(?) with Adolph again. They both, by the way, were absolutely brilliant artists and immensely entertaining and fun people to know. Oscar Levant basically played Adolph in the Fred Astaire film THE BANDWAGON, and Nanette Fabray played Betty Comden. They were doing a little revue together in the village that they wrote and performed with their best friend Judy Holliday in the early 1940s, when a very young Leonard Bernstein walked into that little club and instantly fell in love with all three of them. Within six months Betty and Adolph were starring on Broadway in ON THE TOWN, with music by Bernstein and lyrics by them. If you were to even write that story today, or create it on film, no one would believe it could have ever happened – not to mention that it could today, which it certainly couldnt. At least not in six months from beginning in a Greenwich Village boite to Broadway with the likes of Bernstein and Comden and Green – with a little Judy Holliday thrown in. Lap dissolve to 10 or 15 years later and Betty and Adolph would write BELLS ARE RINGING for pal Judy Holliday, which would be a huge success on Broadway and on film. Adolph, of course, would later marry Phyllis Newman, who is still with us today, while writing SUBWAYS ARE FOR SLEEPING, which David Merrick produced on Broadway. Phyllis would win the Tony award, beating out a young Barbra Streisand who was nominated for I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, where she would meet and marry husband Elliott Gould. And this is way more information than anyone on the planet could have possibly wanted on this subject
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:35:11 +0000
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