Joe Yule

An NYC reading for the new musical CHASING RAINBOWS - THE ROAD TO OZ has been scheduled for this week in New York City, September 8-18. BroadwayWorld has learned that the reading will feature Ruby Rakos (Frances Gumm), Euan Morton (Frank Gumm / Roger Edens), Donna Lynne Champlin (Ethel Gumm), Michael Wartella (Joe Yule), Karen Mason (Kay Koverman), and Douglass Sills (George Jessel / L.B. Mayer), with Emily Rosenfeld, Beatice Tulchin, Emma Howard, Andrea Marie Laxton, Katie Wesler, Jessica Sheridan, Kevin B. McGlynn, Ben Crawford, Tommy Bracco, Sam Strassfeld, Katie Dixon, Tessa Grady, Jonalyn Saxer, Michael Milton, and Stephen Christopher Anthony.

Sugar Babies wasn't supposed to be a hit. The 1979 Broadway insiders 'knew' no one wanted to see two has-been movie stars doing hokey jokes from a long-dead low-brow genre. Yet, it was, a big, fat, lines-around-the-box-office smash. And why? Two words: Mickey Rooney.

Stage legend Liza Minnelli posted the following statement on her Official Facebook page regarding the loss of the Hollywood star

Today, stars of stage and screen reacted to the passing of the stage and screen legend

According to TMZ, Mickey Rooney, who spent nearly his entire life in the show business, died today at 93, after being in ill health for quite some time. He appeared on Broadway in Sugar Babies (opposite fellow MGM legend Ann Miller) and The Will Rogers Follies.

Granted, Babes in Hollywood isn't for all theater audiences-although, frankly, it should be…what's with you people?-and you'll certainly love it more if you're at least somewhat informed about the Garland/Rooney film oeuvre or the legendarily close relationship the two young stars forged as children and continued throughout their lives. Although that friendship was abruptly ended in 1969 when Garland died in London (I remember reading the news in the Memphis Press-Scimitar as a sixth grader), I've no doubt Mickey Rooney still has conversations with his old pal, somewhere within the recesses of his memory and his heart.