Patricia Morison and Alfred Drake in Kiss Me, Kate (1948). Seventy-three years ago tonight, the original Broadway production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate opened at the New Century Theatre (now demolished). The musical, a clever show-within-a-show about a troupe of eccentric actors performing Taming of the Shrew, provided a late career triumph for the composer (he was fifty-seven). His first contribution to Broadway had been a song titled “Esmeralda” in a 1915 musical Hands

Harvey Evans (1941-2021). On Christmas Eve, Broadway veteran Harvey Evans passed away at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey at the age of eighty (he would have turned eighty-one on January 6th). One of the best-loved members of the New York theatrical community, with fifteen Broadway shows to his credit (all but one of them musicals), his was a career dating back to 1955, when he danced in the ensemble of the national tour of Damn Yankees. In an interview in 2007 w

A Grinch-like David Merrick, as drawn by Al Hirschfeld. If you’re like me, a handful of familiar Broadway show songs routinely play in your head the full month of December. Atop my tune stack is always “We Need a Little Christmas,” Jerry Herman’s felicitous tune from Mame (though sung in the show at Thanksgiving). Visions of Rentand its infectious score dance in my head, what with its action beginning on Christmas Eve. And speaking of Christmas Eve, Ann Harada’s portrayal of

The Robinson 32 cent U.S. commemorative postage stamp, issued in 2000. It would have been virtually impossible for me to have ever seen the actor Edward G. Robinson (1893–1973) on the stage, as when he played Broadway for the last time, it was in Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night in 1957 — the year I was born. Renowned as a film actor, it’s important to note, that like so many greats who first burst on the scene with the advent of talking pictures, Robinson was a major st

The marquee for Follies at the Winter Garden (1971). Looking back on my teenage theatergoing heyday, which occurred between the years 1969 and 1972, even fifty years later, the memories remain fresh and intact. From the ages of twelve to sixteen, often solely on my own, I attended 200 Broadway shows over a four-year span. I covered the costs entirely with my own money, too, earned from my paper route delivering Newsday, “the Long Island newspaper.” And, yes, at the risk of re