AL HIRSCHFELD DRAWING OF LUCILLE BALL AND ROBERT PRESTON IN THE 1974 MOVIE MUSICAL “MAME”
“Movies Were Movies” from Mack and Mabel (Original Broadway Cast, Closing Night)
music/lyric Jerry Herman
performance Robert Preston
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Oscars!
This is my annual New Year’s Eve ear worm.
Best to you all in 2013.
This is the song that would play at the end of the last episode of the sitcom about my life.
“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
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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.
