Only me and my muse and forty pianos and ten thousand shoes

[sovay]

I have wanted to hear the original television cast of Stephen Sondheim's Evening Primrose (1966) ever since I discovered the musical via a studio recording in 2001, but it didn't occur to me to turn to the internet until tonight. Staticky YouTube came through. Here's Anthony Perkins introducing "If You Can Find Me, I'm Here" and here he is with Charmian Carr for "Take Me to the World." I have to get hold of the rest of this thing. I knew Perkins could sing; I didn't know what he sounded like. Sondheim should have written more roles for him. He's an ideal interpreter: that quick, tensile voice. He's effortless with the patter. And it's not a big voice, but it warms and brightens in the right places and it has the right kind of wire. Imagine him singing "Being Alive." To my knowledge, his only other musical was Frank Loesser's Greenwillow (1960). What happened? Hollywood? There should have been more.



[edit] According to this afternoon's research, Perkins would have sung "Being Alive" if he had stayed with the original Broadway production of Company long enough to see it replace the original closing number "Happily Ever After." The central role of Robert ("Bobby, Bobby baby, Bobby bubi, Robby, Robert darling") was written for him. He departed early in rehearsals in order to direct another show. The good news is, his replacement Dean Jones was soon replaced himself by Larry Kert, who was so good as Robert that he received the rare honor of being Tony-nominated for a role he had technically understudied; I linked to his performance because it's the definitive one. The bad news is, Perkins never got far enough into rehearsals for there to exist even demo recordings of him in the part and certainly none of "Being Alive," which wasn't even written until the tryout in Boston where it became clear that the cynical rejection of "Happily Ever After" would send audiences out hurt and bewildered, not humming. I don't know if there's more to the story. At least I was right to hear the likeness, the ghost of a voice that was never really there. I hope the directing gig worked out. Dammit, Tony.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, that's great! I don't know much about anything here, but I enjoyed the intro; it was very well done.

(And I think people just didn't make people sing enough after about 1930-1955 or something? Unless it was in scary novelty records, but those are mostly scary indeed.)

[sovay]

Aw, that's great! I don't know much about anything here, but I enjoyed the intro; it was very well done.

I'm glad! Both of the songs from Evening Primrose are very characteristically Sondheim.

(And I think people just didn't make people sing enough after about 1930-1955 or something? Unless it was in scary novelty records, but those are mostly scary indeed.)

I believe the golden age of American musical theater is considered to run through the 1960's, and it is certainly the case that there have been numerous examples of the form since that I personally love, but I agree it doesn't happen enough anymore. Except for some reason in movies where they cast people who can't sing. (I understand nothing about La La Land (2016), including wy it exists.)

[thisbluespirit]

We had moved onto kitchen sink stuff by 1960 - not much singing in that! :-)

ETA By 'we' I mean the UK. Or I'm just not a film buff to know, but not many 60s UK musicals come to mind! It'd all gone Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Carry On and Hammer Horror. And I'm even more rubbish at Hollywood.

[ethelmay]

Dear my brain: Anthony Perkins =/= Anthony Hopkins. Please make a note of it.

[sovay]

Dear my brain: Anthony Perkins =/= Anthony Hopkins.

I had Jeff Bridges and Jeff Daniels mixed up for years.

I have no idea if Anthony Hopkins can sing. Maybe he can't and that will disambiguate them.

[ethelmay]

He's apparently a good pianist and composes, but the one thing I could find with him singing (not that I tried very hard) he was doing a Shatner Sprachstimme thing.

[sovay]

He's apparently a good pianist and composes, but the one thing I could find with him singing (not that I tried very hard) he was doing a Shatner Sprachstimme thing.

Well, I didn't know about the piano, and that's neat.

Also, of course, he's alive. I'm pretty bitter about Perkins not being. I'm aware he could have gotten hit by any number of literal or metaphorical sixteen-wheelers in the years since 1992, but AIDS deaths are almost unequivocally too early and wrong.

[gwynnega]

That is awesome.

[sovay]

That is awesome.

It makes me so happy. I've now played "Never Will I Marry" several dozen times off YouTube.

[spikewriter]

The idea of Anthony Perkins singing “Being Alive” is one of those wish moments that will never be fulfilled, sadly. I would have loved to have heard him do that number, as much as I love Kert’s version. I had the joy of seeing Larry Kert in Side by Side by Sondheim on Broadway. They did a number of songs from Company, but didn’t have him do “Being Alive.” They did, however, drop the ladies singing “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” in favor of him singing “Something Coming.” Wonderful to get a chance to see him perform the song I’d listened to so many times.

That production was also where I first heard of Evening Primrose with the song “I Remember.” I hadn’t seen it mentioned in any books, and, of course, there was no cast recording at the time. But I found the whole thing on YouTube, with Spanish subtitles, but reasonably good quality. I need to grab that off the web in case it disappears at some point. Sadly, I can’t get the links to work, but it’s there.

[sovay]

The idea of Anthony Perkins singing “Being Alive” is one of those wish moments that will never be fulfilled, sadly. I would have loved to have heard him do that number, as much as I love Kert’s version.

I have been accumulating a wistful alternate history of film for some time now (Robert Newton as Heathcliff in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, etc.), but this is a pretty serious reason to want at least an original cast recording from the next universe over.

They did, however, drop the ladies singing “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” in favor of him singing “Something Coming.” Wonderful to get a chance to see him perform the song I’d listened to so many times.

Oh, lovely. I am glad you had that.

But I found the whole thing on YouTube, with Spanish subtitles, but reasonably good quality. I need to grab that off the web in case it disappears at some point. Sadly, I can’t get the links to work, but it’s there.

I've seen it in the sidebar! At the moment I am holding out for tracking down the Archive of American Television DVD, but it's good to know there is at least an option online if my local library system fails me.

[rinue]

I'm behind and catching up - what great clips! Even staticky, I enjoy the performance very much. And yeah, now that I've heard how he does that style of patter I can hear the ghost of it in some other singers doing other numbers and not quite nailing them. I get it now.

[sovay]

And yeah, now that I've heard how he does that style of patter I can hear the ghost of it in some other singers doing other numbers and not quite nailing them. I get it now.

I totally did not expect Anthony Perkins to be a musical revelation, but I'm really happy about it.