Excerpt from PBS Jerry Herman Documentary Now Online
By: BWW News Desk Apr. 05, 2007
A three-and-a-half minute excerpt from the soon-to-be-seen PBS documentary "Words and Music by Jerry Herman" is now online at this link.
Upcoming private and public preview screenings at which Jerry Herman will be in attendance are The Yale Club (May 22), 92nd St Y (May 23), The Museum of Television and Broadcasting (June 18). The documentary has also been selected for this year's Sarasota Film Festival (to be screened on April 14 &15).
"Words and Music by Jerry Herman," chronicles the life and career of one of the American Musical Theater's legendary figures: Jerry Herman, the composer and lyricist of the smash hit shows Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage Aux Folles.
This 90 minute film, created for NJN Public Television, follows Herman's rise from witty, topical off-Broadway revues in the 1950s, to his first Broadway triumphs in the 1960s -- Milk and Honey, followed by the record-breaking Dolly and then Mame -- through the 1970s (Dear World, Mack & Mabel, The Grand Tour) to his 1983 smash hit, La Cage Aux Folles, which made social and political history.
The star-studded supporting cast includes Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury, Charles Nelson Reilly, Marge Champion, Arthur Laurents, Michael Feinstein, Charles Strouse, Fred Ebb, George Hearn, Phyllis Newman, Musical Director Donald Pippin, Francine Pascal, Leslie Uggams, Jason Graae, and theater historians Miles Kreuger and Ken Bloom.
Nearly five years in the making, the film incorporates a remarkable collection of photographs and archival footage (much of it never seen in public) including Carol Channing doing the original Hello, Dolly! title song; Super-8 films of Angela Lansbury in Mame and Dear World; numbers from Mack & Mabel (a cult favorite among aficionados;) scenes from La Cage; and most astonishingly, film of the college musical Herman wrote at University of Miami.
Photo - Amber Edwards and Jerry Herman by Helen Montgomery-Drysdale
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