Robert Morse & Rick McKay to Be Honored at Special Preview of BROADWAY: BEYOND THE GOLDEN AGE

The Palm Beach International Film Festival (PBIFF) announced its highly anticipated film line-up for the 19th edition, April 3 - 10, 2014, featuring 14 World Premieres, 8 North American and 8 U.S. Premieres. PBIFF (www.pbifilmfest.org) will present features, documentaries and short films from the U.S. and around the world, including Brazil, Venezuela, France, England, Israel, Hong Kong, Japan, India, New Zealand, Austria, the Philippines, Croatia, Australia, Canada, Germany and South Korea, to name just a few, and will play host to filmmakers, producers and actors to represent and discuss their films.

"This year's festival promises an outstanding and diverse program of features, documentaries, shorts and music videos, including many World, US and Florida premieres," comments Randi Emerman, President and CEO of PBIFF. "The Palm Beach International Film Festival is a true celebration of the art of film with fun events and the opportunity to meet filmmakers from every corner of the world."

Sure to be one of the most anticipated evenings of the festival, PBIFF is proud to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Emmy and Tony award-winning actor Robert Morse, who appears in Rick McKay's film, Broadway: BEYOND the Golden Age at this year's festival. Morse is a man of the stage, having won two Tony Awards, one for How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and one for Tru. He also starred in the film version of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, as well as 60s cult favorite The Loved One and A Guide for the Married Man opposite Walter Matthau, among many others. He is most recently known for his role as Bertram Cooper in AMC's Mad Men.

The festival will also honor director Rick McKay with the Visionary Award, celebrating his on-going achievement of documenting and preserving the history of the Broadway stage with stories told directly from the legends who were there, while illustrating their tales not only with amazing, rare archival performance footage but also through their home movies and photos as well. McKay returns to Palm Beach after premiering his award-winning documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, which won at PBIFF ten years ago, and this year will have a very special early sneak preview of his new film-in-progress, Broadway: BEYOND the Golden Age, due to be released theatrically in the Fall of 2014, followed by an audience Q&A and Award presentation. The evening, which takes place on Monday April 7 at 7:00 pm at the Cinemark Palace 20 Theatres, will be capped with a Sardi's-inspired party at Bogart's on the Premier Level of Cinemark Palace 20.

Broadway: BEYOND the Golden Age, USA

SPECIAL SNEAK PREVIEW-IN-PROGRESS PRESENTATION on April 7th, 2014

Directed by Rick McKay

The story of Broadway in the 1960's and 70's from 1959-81, Part II of McKay's Broadway: The Golden Age Trilogy, starring 100 LEGENDS including Robert Redford, Elizabeth Ashley, Glenn Close, Liza Minnelli, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, Shirley MacLaine, Stephen Sondheim, Alec Baldwin, Jane Fonda, Carol Channing, Eva Marie Saint and the ORIGINAL casts of "A Chorus Line," "Pippin," "Bye Bye Birdie," "Chicago," "42nd Street" - as well as MORE extremely rare, never-before-seen, lost footage from Broadway performances! Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age' is produced by Rick McKay, Anne L. Bernstein, Richard Weigle, Jamie deRoy, Jane Klain, Frances Bator, Jack Coco and Michael Anastasio.

Robert Morse created the role of Barnaby in The Matchmaker on Broadway in 1955 opposite Ruth Gordon and reprised the role in the 1958 film adaptation of The Matchmaker, this time opposite Shirley Booth. That same year, he won the Theatre World Award and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for Say, Darling. Morse had to lobby David Merrick for a role in Take Me Along, as there was a question as to whether he could, at 28, play a convincing 16-year-old; he could and did. What was considered the final step toward full stardom was his performance as J. Pierrepont Finch in the Pulitzer Prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It won him the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical in 1962. He also starred in the 1967 movie version.

In 1964, Morse co-starred in the comedy film Quick, Before It Melts. In 1965, Morse appeared in the black comedy film The Loved One, a movie based on the Evelyn Waugh novel of the same name that satirized the funeral business in Los Angeles, in particular the Forest Lawn Cemetery. In 1967, he co-starred in A Guide for the Married Man, opposite Walter Matthau. In 1968, he appeared in the comedy Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? opposite Doris Day. In the same year, he appeared in the 1968 television series That's Life, which attempted to blend the musical genre with a situation comedy centered on newlyweds "Robert" and "Gloria" (played by E. J. Peaker).

Morse was in the original Broadway cast of Sugar, a 1972 musical stage adaptation of Some Like It Hot, for which he was nominated for another Tony. He won a Tony award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show for his portrayal of Truman Capote in Tru (1989). In 1992, he recreated his performance for the PBS series American Playhouse and won the Emmy Award as Best Actor in a Miniseries or Special.

Beginning in 2007, Morse took on a recurring role in the AMC dramatic series Mad Men as Bertram Cooper, a partner in the advertising agency Sterling Cooper, for which role he was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor in 2008, 2010, 2011, and in 2013.

Rick McKay is the award-winning Producer/Director/Writer/Cinematographer/Editor of the hit film Broadway: The Golden Age. For five seasons he was a segment producer on WNET13's City Arts, the most honored, locally produced show in television history, which won over 30 Emmy awards. Rick also produced the first story commissioned for the critically successful national PBS series Egg: The Arts Show, garnering another two Emmy nominations as well as helping to create the opening segment of two recent national Tony Awards broadcasts. Rick won four of the industry's prestigious Telly awards for his television work, has produced episodes for the immensely successful series Biography on the Arts and Entertainment network, and has produced for HBO and United Artists. Rick is also an on-air personality on national PBS television, hosting the incredibly successful pledge drives for "Broadway: The Golden Age" around the country and was recently seen co-hosting the non-cable premiere of Liza with a Z with Liza Minnelli on PBS.

Rick recently returned from New Zealand, working at famed director Peter Jackson's Park Road Post Productions, finishing his new film, "FAY WRAY," which Jackson appears in, along with Naomi Watts, Gore Vidal, Leonard Maltin, McKay and many others. The film is half documentary, chronicling Wray's legendary, iconic career in film - and half road film, as Wray and McKay, despite the half-century difference in their ages, travel the globe, becoming fast friends, while McKay was beginning his career in film and Wray was entering her tenth and last decade, The film is due for release in late 2015.

"Broadway: The Golden Age" has won over 15 film festival awards, is on 17 critics' Top Ten Films of the year lists and was a hit in theatres around the country. The SONY/BMG DVD is still a best seller and the film premiered on US television on national PBS in March 2006 as one of their most successful national pledge drives ever. Rick also produced, directed and shot Elaine Stritch: At Liberty for PBS. Much of this footage was also used to make the HBO documentary of the same name, which won Elaine Stritch the 2004 Emmy award, and for which Rick is credited as producer and cinematographer. Rick is also an award-winning print journalist with numerous magazine and newspaper articles to his credit. His story Birds of a Feather won him San Francisco's Cable Car Award for "Outstanding Journalist" for feature reporting. Rick also has a successful career as an in-demand film and theatre lecturer around the world. A born raconteur, Rick appears with his films and tells behinds the scenes stories of their creation as well as of the history of film and theatre, while showing never-before-seen out-takes and rare footage from his films and from live performances.

Rick was honored at the Sundance Film Festival by PBS and inducted into the PBS Producers Academy, as one of their "best and brightest documentary producer/directors" for his continuing independent film and television work. Rick has also been honored with the "Special Contribution to Film" Award from Stonybrook University Film Festival and the "Limelight Award" from Ojai Film Festival. Recently Rick was also honored with the "New England Theatre Conference Special Contribution to Theatre Award" and the Theatre Museum of New York City's "Award of Excellence for Theatre History Preservation." Rick is also a Doctor of Fine Arts, after being honored at Five Towns College in New York where McKay, Michael Feinstein and Sheldon Harnick were all presented with honorary degrees at a special event celebrating their work.

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