BERNADETTE & JESSICA IN THE SAME PHOTO?!
I THINK MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED.
Well this is a trifecta of awesome.
I should have worn sleeves,
I wore sleeves the last time…
Bernadette rocked the leg slit way before Angelina.
She’s singing “How Lucky Can You Get” from Funny Lady at the Oscars. And it’s fantastic! (skip to about 50 sec in)
Bernadette Peters sings an adapted version of “Putting it Together” for the 66th Academy Awards. I vividly remember watching this when it first aired.
I love this carol because it is so sweet and simple and such a beautiful story. Many singers won’t sing it because it doesn’t give opportunities for vocal acrobatics, or worse, they junk it up with too much ornamentation or try to put the acrobatics in, destroying the song. But I love the way Bernadette sings it because she keeps it simple and tells the story beautifully.
I AM SO DONE.
and Marvin Laird (who wrote Ruthless!) at the piano!
Gypsy Personality Test
So Jo and I were talking and we decided that you can tell a lot about a person by who their favorite Mama Rose is. I might expand upon this later, but here’s a short summary:
Ethel Merman: You’re a theatre purist, you’d be hard-pressed to find an NBCR that you think is remotely comparable to the OBCR. You sympathize the best with Rose’s character, you sometimes find yourself putting on a much bigger persona to cover up your insecurities.You’re a people person through and through, you love to make people happy.
Angela Lansbury: You’ve probably worked in theatre for a long time, and you’re somewhat jaded by it. You might have had a stage mother yourself in your childhood.You’re a hard worker and you commit to everything 100%, you don’t do things by halves.
Tyne Daly: You are most likely a liar, or worse - a theatre hipster.
Bernadette Peters: You have innumerable insecurities which haunt you on a day-to-day basis. You wish you could let someone else shoulder the burden for a while, but the mere thought of that makes you even more stressed. You’re a romantic at heart and you have a very warm outward personality.
Patti LuPone: You enjoy the thrill of living vicariously through others. You love excitement and you can sometimes make rash decisions. You make mistakes and are okay with this, though you have a hard time learning from them. You feel like not many people understand you, and you’re okay with that (most of the time).
“So Much to Do in New York” from Song and Dance (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
music Andrew Lloyd Webber lyric Don Black (maybe with some help by Richard Maltby Jr., if he really wants to take credit)
performance Bernadette Peters
—
Because I found myself talking about this show a bit lately, and I enjoy this song musically (so did Stephen Flaherty, apparently, since he basically used the same opening vamp for “What Kind of Woman” in Ragtime…) Bernadette is great, natch. The lyric (like the rest in the show) has moments of borderline insight/relevance but is largely ridiculous. I mean, WHO HAS MOVED TO NEW YORK CITY TO DESIGN HATS SINCE IRENE MALLOY?
Bernadette singing “Tell Me On a Sunday” live on Broadway (on YouTube).
I really like this song (even if the lyric makes me twitch with its ridiculous rhymes for “please”—chimpanzees? flying trapeze? really?).
But Bernadette is in PEAK form.
“My Rules” (“Elliot Garfield Grant”*) from The Goodbye Girl (Original Broadway Cast)
music Marvin Hamlisch lyric David Zippel
performance Bernadette Peters, Martin Short
—
As we continue to mourn/celebrate Marvin Hamlisch, I think we will find few melodies more infectious.
*According to the sheet music, IBDB’s “Songs in the production” and other sources this entire sequence is known only as “My Rules”, though a few will list “My Rules” and “Elliot Garfield” grant as separate numbers. I wonder if the latter title was discarded for reasons similar to “Tits and Ass” being referred to as “Dance Ten, Looks Three”—Did the title “Elliot Garfield Grant” give too much away?
“I Won’t Send Roses / Who Needs Roses” from Mack and Mabel (Original Broadway Cast, Closing Night)
music/lyric Jerry Herman book Michael Stewart
performed by Robert Preston, Bernadette Peters
—
This track is about 7min long and includes a lot of the scene surrounding these two great numbers (really different versions of the same number) from Mack and Mabel. There is some truly wonderful writing on Stewart’s part which is beautifully and seamlessly integrated with Herman at his absolute best. Peters is tremendously affecting, and Preston is likewise ideally gruff, distancing, and appealing.
Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Barbara Cook and Mary Martin pay tribute to the late Robert Preston on the 1987 Tony Awards, after Preston had recently passed. Bernadette Peters performs “Time Heals Everything”; Barbara Cook soars with “‘Till There Was You”; and Mary Martin comes out, talks about her love of Robert, and then sings “My Cup Runneth Over.”
You can imagine the tears when Mary Martin dedicates the song to his wife Catherine and son Richard, and Robert. What a beautiful moving tribute to a wonderful man. They don’t have tributes like this anymore.
Unfortunately, Ms. Martin sings “This House”, NOT ”My Cup Runneth Over”. But there IS a marching band! (and all three ladies are heaven). My new life goal is to deserve such a tribute.
There Won’t Be Trumpets/A Parade in Town/Everybody Says Don’t | Bernadette Peters, Madeline Kahn, and Scott Bakula
Anyone Can Whistle
ALSO ANGELA LANSBURY.
I was OBSESSED with this recording when I first got it (12 or so years ago), and it remains the definitive WHISTLE disk in my mind. I had no idea this video existed. It is so now what I imagined. But amazing. AMAZING. amazing.
