Music: Pulse of a Nation

Pulse of a nation

PBS SALUTES THE AMERICAN ART OF THE MUSICAL

By Charlie McCollum

Mercury News


Edgar ``Yip'' Harburg -- the songwriter best known for the Depression-era anthem ``Brother Can You Spare A Dime?'' -- once said that ``songs are the pulse of a nation's heart, a fever chart of its health.

``Are we at peace? Are we in trouble? Are we floundering? Do we feel beautiful? Do we feel ugly? Listen to our songs.''

That quote pops up early in PBS's new ``Broadway: The American Musical'' and serves as a thematic linchpin for the engaging and wonderfully entertaining six-hour miniseries on the history of musical theater.

``My underlying thesis, or theme, was that Yip Harburg quote,'' says Michael Kantor, producer and director of the series. ``The Broadway musical is a barometer of American culture. Through the Broadway shows, the sound, the music, we see the bigger picture -- what we as a nation were doing and what we were feeling.''

Almost a decade in the making, ``Broadway'' (9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, Ch. 9) is not merely a short-hand history or overview of the American musical theater. In fact, Kantor says, he worked hard to avoid a ``That's Entertainment!'' collection of clips.

Rather, ``Broadway'' tries to take shows ranging from ``The Ziegfeld Follies,'' ``Show Boat'' and ``Pal Joey'' to ``Oklahoma!,'' ``A Chorus Line'' and ``Wicked'' and place them within the context of an evolving America. That makes for an intriguing and often surprising tapestry in which some major shows, such as ``Annie,'' are all but ignored while relatively obscure pieces such as ``The Cradle Will Rock,'' Marc Blitzstein's politically charged workers' opera, get large chunks of time.

``We tried to choose shows and songs and biographies that reflected larger movements, larger issues, larger themes in American cultural history,'' says Kantor, who broke into documentary filmmaking working with the likes of Ken Burns and Stephen Ives.

``Something like `Cradle Will Rock' may be an anomaly within the Broadway stage but it speaks to a time in American history the way no other show of that period did. What we tried to do, throughout the show, was mix Broadway history with American history.''

But while it's offering history, ``Broadway'' is also loaded with great moments from seminal musicals and rare backstage footage. There is some insightful (and often funny) commentary from the likes of Kitty Carlisle Hart, the widow of playwright Moss Hart; the late theater cartoonist Al Hirschfeld; critics John Lahr and Brendan Gill; and performers ranging from Ziegfeld Follies dancer Dana O'Connell to Nathan Lane of ``The Producers.''

Compiling the clips was ``an intricate process,'' notes Kantor. ``You can't really do a history of the Broadway musical without unfettered access to the music. And the music itself is carefully controlled and licensed by a variety of companies.''

As a result, he says, ``it literally took three years just to lay the groundwork so that everybody understood this is what we're trying to do -- and what we could afford'' to pay. ``I would call people and tell them, `Look, we're not making a Budweiser commercial here. We're trying to tell the history of this art form.' ''

There are some true finds within ``Broadway.'' Kantor and his staff were able to unearth a color clip of a 1920s Ziegfeld Follies performance, a hysterically funny performance by the cast of ``Hair'' on ``The Ed Sullivan Show'' and a BBC television performance by the original cast of Frank Loesser's ``Guys and Dolls.''

What you won't see is too many clips from the film versions of the top Broadway shows.

``The operating principal was always: Let's find the best material that shows what Broadway was about, not how Hollywood interpreted Broadway,'' says Kantor. ``If Fred Astaire sang `Night and Day' on stage and two years later, sings it in his first film role, that feels like it's OK.

``But when you get something like `Cabaret,' everyone expects you're going to show Liza Minnelli because she won an Academy Award. Well, even though that film was directed by a Broadway guy, Bob Fosse, it's a Hollywood version. So we stuck with Jill Haworth, the original Sally Bowles, and it's a lot more interesting.''

Even though ``Broadway'' runs six hours, there were people and shows that had to be left out or turned into brief mentions. In particular, Kantor would have liked to give more time to ``one of my very favorite musicals: `Pin and Needles,' second-longest-running show of the 1930s.

``The cast was a group of Garment Workers union members -- stitchers, seamstresses. They decided to put on a little topical revue with songs about the merger of the AFL and the CIO, the rise of fascism in Europe. And it became this huge hit. Many of the workers actually had to leave their jobs to become union members on Broadway.''

But, Kantor says, ``what was really important to me was not to make this about my favorite shows or my favorite Broadway moments. The choices we made had to do with the evolution of the art form like ``Company'' or -- like `Hair' or `Cradle Will Rock' -- shows that link explicitly to the American history of the moment or important biographical moments, like the death of George Gershwin.''

Kantor is not one of those who bemoan the current state of Broadway with its emphasis on blockbuster musicals underwritten by big corporations like Disney or Universal Studios and a constant stream of revivals.

``Broadway is the intersection of art and commerce,'' says Kantor. ``The Broadway hit usually achieves both. It's artistically brilliant and commercially successful. Sometimes the art jumps ahead and you have a show like `Chicago' which wasn't a big hit in its time and had mixed reviews and was totally overshadowed by `A Chorus Line.' But who's laughing now?''

That is one reason the miniseries ends with an extensive segment on ``Wicked,'' the musical riff on ``The Wizard of Oz'' that is more entertaining than groundbreaking. ``My job wasn't to make a judgment of whether that is good or bad,'' he says. ``I'm just trying to tell it the way it is. I don't see that as a cop-out.''

Still, what permeates ``Broadway'' is a love of musical theater as a uniquely American art form and the performers who graced the stages of the theaters along the Great White Way. Broadway, says Kantor, ``represents a certain lure, a certain thrill. There are only 33 Broadway theaters and they represent a certain pinnacle of entertainment that no movie set and no theater anywhere else is going to provide.''

Toward the end of ``Broadway,'' that thrill of theater gets summed up by Jerry Mitchell, the choreographer for ``Wicked'' and the most recent revival of ``Gypsy,'' when he talks about seeing ``Chorus Line'' for the first time.

``I was in the last row of the last balcony,'' Mitchell says. After the show, ``I went back to my dance teacher and said, `You've got to teach me the opening combination.'

``Two years, I audition, I got the show, and I went on tour with the show. And when I went on for the first time, I was doing the opening combination and I remember thinking to myself, `I wonder who's in the back row?' ''

`Broadway:

The American Musical'**** (If you love musicals . . .)

*** (Even if you

don't . . .)

Airing 9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, Ch. 9

Repeat 3 p.m. Oct. 30, Ch. 9 (all six hours)

Narrator Julie Andrews

Producer-director Michael Kantor

The book ``Broadway: The American Musical'' (Bulfinch Press, $60)

The CDs ``The Best of Broadway: The American Musical'' (single disc, Decca, $18.98)

``Broadway: The American Musical'' (five discs, Sony, $59.98)


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Contact Charlie McCollum at [email protected] or (408) 920-5245.