Thanksgiving Video Dish: Five Broadway Turkeys That Made Delicious Leftovers

"Underappreciated" is the sensitive way of putting it, but in unapologetic showbiz parlance, the preferred terms are "flop," "bomb" and, the one most appropriate for today's occasion, "turkey."

While Broadway's history is loaded with short-running shows that nevertheless have their passionate, sometimes cultish, fans, there are also those that have somehow managed to gain popularity through the years.

Here are five Broadway turkeys that eventually made pretty delicious leftovers.

THE THREEPENNY OPERA - German book and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht, music by Kurt Weill

Considered an early masterpiece of serious musical theatre as politically volatile social commentary, THE THREEPENNY OPERA came to Broadway five years after its 1928 Berlin premiere and promptly closed after twelve performances. In a Depression era, when Broadway musicals were bursting with the jazzy, enjoyable scores of young Americans like Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers, Irving Berlin and Rodgers and Hart, a confrontational musical about a well-mannered cutthroat who is really no more of a crook than your average banker was not on everyone's short list.

But a 1954 Off-Broadway production at the Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel), proved enormously successful. After an initial run of 96 performances, the production returned the next year and was a Greenwich Village mainstay until the end of 1961. The presence of Weill's wife, the great star Lotte Lenya, surely helped THE THREEPENNY OPERA gain success this time around, as did the fact that the show was a reminder of the kind of fresh, youthful theatre that was abundant in Berlin until Hitler took over.

But perhaps the biggest factor in THE THREEPENNY OPERA's newfound success was that Marc Blitzstein's translation was softer than what was heard by Broadway audiences in 1933. The popular jazz recording of its opening "Ballad of Mack The Knife" by Louis Armstrong used the Blitzstein lyrics, as did Bobby Darin's later recording. They might not have been as popular if they used the harsher 1933 translation by Gifford Cochran and Jerrold Krimsky, whose lyrics were eventually used as subtitles for the 1931 German movie.

CANDIDE - Music by Leonard Bernstein, original 1956 book by Lillian Hellman, original 1956 lyrics by Richard Wilbur, John La Touche and Dorothy Parker.

Lillian Hellman's book for the original version of the musical based on Voltaire's feather-light comic novella, CANDIDE, was said to be too dark and political to suit the source and she rather famously disowned herself from the work after its two months on Broadway, never allowing the material she wrote to be used again.

But music lovers adored Leonard Berstein's comic operetta score, with the clever lyrics written primarily by La Touche. The original Broadway cast album, featuring the magnificent voices of Barbara Cook and Robert Rounseville was a top seller.

Harold Prince pegged Hugh Wheeler to write a new book for his 1974 Broadway revival, with Stephen Sondheim revising lyrics to match the new narrative. The environmental production ditched the original's operetta style and scaled down the orchestra. With an improved book, CANDIDE ran for two years, but many were disappointed by the abandoning of the original's full orchestrations and legit voices. Using the Wheeler book, Prince staged a 1982 version for New York City Opera that combined the best of both worlds. It's a version used at opera houses worldwide.

The overture to CANDIDE, orchestrated by Bernstein himself, has achieved its own popularity as a concert hall favorite. Here is the maestro conducting the piece, played in 1989 by the London Symphony Orchestra.

MACK & MABEL - Book by Michael Stewart, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman

It seems hard to believe that for many, the greatest score written by the man who gave Broadway HELLO, DOLLY!, MAME and LA CAGE AUX FOLLES was for a musical that lasted less than two months on Broadway. Even harder to believe is that Jerry Herman's MACK & MABEL didn't even get a Tony nomination for its sublime score.

With Robert Preston playing genius director of the silent era, Mack Sennett, and Bernadette Peters as his acting discovery, Mabel Normand, there was certainly no lack of star power, and the story of a passionate artist who can't bring himself to say 'I love you' to his Galatea-like creation is certainly one that has worked in musicals, but while Stewart's book isn't bad, audiences seemed turned off by real life's second act plot turns; Mabel's drug addiction and the accusations that she murdered her lover, a rival director.

Interest in MACK & MABEL was renewed in the early 80s when champion ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean started skating to the show's entr'acte in competitions. (The track is listed as the overture on the original Broadway cast recording, but it is actually the entr'acte.)

Through the years there have been successful British and regional productions of MACK & MABEL, featuring revised books and new endings. And while MACK & MABEL has not returned to Broadway yet, it could be just one successful Encores! production away from coming back.

Below is rehearsal footage of the original Broadway production of MACK & MABEL, along with footage filmed during a performance from the wings.

THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW - Book, music and lyrics by Richard O'Brien

In the early 1970s, Richard O'Brien was an out-of-work British actor writing a musical inspired by his love for science fiction B movies and horror schlock to give him something to do in his free time. But THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW was an immediate smash in London, running for nearly 3,000 performances.

On Broadway, however, his subversive campiness could only eke out a two month run in 1975. The film version, titled THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, didn't do well on this shore either, until Greenwich Village's Waverly Theatre started having midnight screenings every weekend that attracted regulars who would arrive dressed as the characters and yell out, in unison, what became a traditional collection of remarks directed at the screen. The cult fad caught on and movie theatres across the country began having midnight showings where fans replicated the Waverly experience.

So when THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW returned to Broadway in 2000, this time running for well over a year, the audience participation elements were encouraged, adding a whole new dimension to the piece because now there were live actors who could react.

The video contains photos of the original Broadway production, along with a 1975 on-stage recording of Tim Curry as Frank 'N' Furter singing "Sweet Transvestite."

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG - Book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Perhaps if Broadway musicals were still in the habit of recording their cast albums immediately after opening and releasing them very shortly after, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG might have avoided closing only 16 performances into its 1981 run.

The cast album, recorded the day after the musical's final performance, reveals a thrilling and complex score with three songs that have since become American Songbook standards: "Not A Day Goes By," "Good Thing Going," and "Old Friends."

But even a great score's attributes can be lost in a shaky book and production. Perhaps the main problem was establishing empathy for its main characters. The story tells how three best friends, all trying to make it in the arts, go from eager and optimistic youths to, 25 years later, bitter and disillusioned adults. But with the book starting with them as adults and gradually going backwards with each scene, audiences might not have been willing to emotionally invest in the unlikeable people introduced in the initial scenes.

It wasn't until late in the second act when the authors provided the moment that could make audiences fall madly in love with the trio. In the musical scene, "Opening Doors,' we see the them leaning on each other to get through the exciting times of trying to make their initial mark in the world. In the clip below, from the HBO documentary, "Six By Sondheim," the trio is played by Jeremy Jordan, Darren Criss and America Ferrara.

Like MACK & MABEL, MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG has been revised several times in major productions, but with its universal theme of young adults setting out on their own for the first time, it has also become a very popular choice for college theatre groups. The recent ENCORES! concert production showed it still to be a work in progress, but audiences still respond affectionately when they see representations of their former or their future selves on stage.