The film covers Broadway shows from 1959 to the early 1980s and features interviews with Bea Arthur, Elizabeth Ashley, Alec Baldwin, Candy Brown, Carol Burnett, Glenn Close, André De Shields, Jane Fonda, Robert Goulet, Robert Guillaume, Cherry Jones, Baayork Lee, Donna McKechnie, Liza Minnelli, Robert Morse, Jerry Orbach, Robert Redford, Debbie Reynolds, Chita Rivera, Eva Marie Saint, Liev Schreiber, Elaine Stritch, Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen and Lesley Ann Warren.

Almost exactly two years later the man who made those films, Rick McKay, passed away suddenly. Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age was left unfinished and unreleased.

This weekend Great Performances on PBS will begin airing the documentary which was completed by friends and colleagues of McKay. [Check your local PBS listings for details.]

Two of the most important people who helped complete Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age were producers Jamie deRoy and Jane Klain. Last week I spoke by phone with both women to get the details on how they were able to finish McKay’s film and how they hope it brings to fruition everything McKay wanted the film to be.

What follows are excerpts from those conversations that have been edited for length and clarity.

How did you get involved with finishing Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age?

DeRoy: It sort of became this natural thing that we ended up doing to see that his wishes were carried out. Everybody had been asking for years about the film because the film had been going on for years.

Klain: Four of his producers and friends obviously realized what Rick would want is for the film to get out there. We all worked towards what Rick wanted. Since the first film was a theatrical release and it was so unlikely to get another, being on television was the ideal home for it. I know his first choice was PBS.

How far along had Rick gotten with the film before he passed away?

DeRoy: He had gotten pretty far, but it was not a finished film. It was way too long.

Klain: When Rick died I connected with a brilliant editor who would work on it pro bono, but that fell through. Another producer/director wanted to unravel it and make a different film and I said no. Rick was really a visionary. He had a unique way of storytelling. The way he edited was amazing.

He seemed to get almost everyone he ever wanted for these films. How did he do that?

DeRoy: Everybody that met him and he would interview would end up adoring him. He really charmed people. He loved the theater so much. He could talk to anybody.

Klain: He had somewhere between 100-150 interviews with these legends. Some were one to one-and-a-half hours, some were five hours.

Rick told me how thrilled he was to have found footage of Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli performing together in the original production of Chicago when Gwen Verdon had to miss several performances.*

Klain: Candy Brown was a Fosse dancer. I had seen footage she had taken with her 8mm camera. I’m very good at tracking down people. They became such close friends. She let him have the footage – amongst it was footage with Chita and Liza which Liza had not seen before. Rick’s film has John Kander talking about it and Liza talking about it.

Rick was kind of a one-man band doing it all with his films, but the new film has 11 producers.

DeRoy: He pretty much was a one-man band. But listen, all of us were out there raising money and making introductions and helping. If I was in the room when he was doing an interview or showing the film I got acknowledged. If I wasn’t in the room, I wouldn’t have gotten acknowledged. Maybe it made a much better story.

Klain: If Rick had lived one of the big hurdles he was going to have to face was raising money for the post-production and all the licensing. That was a big deal for the first film. WNET 13 has done a lot of that. We’ve been in the decision making seat and PBS has been amazing.

Jamie I want to ask you a question I asked Rick five years ago. In an era where younger people don’t care about history because it was “before their time,” what would you tell them is the reason to care about Broadway and the people in this film?

DeRoy: It’s like the building blocks of everything. I’m always appalled at actors or singers who don’t know the history. When I was involved in the cabaret community and mentioned Margaret Whiting they would go, “who?” I don’t get it. It’s part of your learning process. These films could be shown in schools and you can learn a hell of a lot from it. We all learned by watching Ethel Merman. These were my idols. Even though they were before my time, so to speak, they are the ones who laid the groundwork for everyone to come up afterwards.

Jonathan Groff, who introduces the movie, wrote Rick a fan letter saying how much the film meant to him. Shortly before Rick died I took him to see Jonathan at the 92nd Street Y doing a show. They were talking afterwards about doing a follow-up interview because Jonathan was so young when he did his and he had some experiences since that first interview.

It’s just been a passion for all of us and it was certainly a passion of Rick’s. I’m only sorry he’s not here to see it come to life. And everybody can now enjoy it. Not only enjoy it, but learn from it. It’s all there and these films were meant to be seen.

*Liza Minnelli took on the role of Roxie Hart from August 8th to September 13th, 1975. There was announcement over the PA system that Gwen Verdon would be out at the performance. Audiences would grumble. The announcement continued to reveal that Minnelli was performing in her place. There were no press releases and no inserts in the Playbills.

Photo of Rick McKay courtesy WNET/PBS

The post How Rick McKay’s “Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age” Was Finished appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Every year Broadway’s best performers switch gender by having the men sing songs written for female characters and the women singing songs written for male characters. Add clever staging and you have one of each year’s most entertaining concerts.

For Broadway Backwards 2021, the concept allows for the combination of new material and great performances from previous editions of the show.

There is a rather simple storyline this year: Tony nominee Jenn Colella (Come From Away) will play a late night TV host who takes a young man living in isolated New York (Jay Armstrong Johnson of Quantico and The Phantom of the Opera) on an amazing journey. There will be an emphasis on LGBTQ stories in the event.

It strikes me a little like Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard of Oz. And wait until you see who he runs into along the way:

The opening number features Tony Award winners Stephanie J. Block (The Cher Show) and Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon) with Deborah Cox (Jekyll and Hyde).

Who else might he encounter? Debbie Allen, Amy Adams, Ward Billeisen, Matt Bomer, Brenda Braxton, Charl Brown, Tituss Burgess, Joshua Buscher-West, Len Cariou, Carolee Carmello, Jamie Cepero, Bryan Terrell Clark, Glenn Close, Darren Criss, Steven Cutts, Ariana DeBose, Loretta Devine, Cynthia Erivo, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Garlen Gilliland, James Monroe Iglehart, Cheyenne Jackson, Cherry Jones, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Andy Kelso, Eddie Korbich, Marty Lawson, L Morgan Lee, Raymond J. Lee, Aasif Mandvi, Michael McElroy, Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Ruthie Ann Miles, Bonnie Milligan, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Debra Monk, Jessie Mueller, Javier Muñoz, Kelli O’Hara, Karen Olivo, Alfie Parker Jr., Jim Parsons, Brandon Pearson, Bernadette Peters, Eric Petersen, Eve Plumb, Waldemar Quinones-Villanueva, Andrew Rannells, Alex Ringler, Chita Rivera, Roslyn Ruff, Michael James Scott, Sis and Elizabeth Stanley, Ryan Steele, Dennis Stowe, Lillias White, Curtis Wiley and Tony Yazbeck.

You want more? How about special guests Chasten Buttigieg, Anderson Cooper, Ariana DeBose, Don Lemon, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Robin Roberts, Tony Shalhoub and Ben Vereen?

Being this is a Broadway event, we can’t leave out the rest of the company: Danyel Fulton, Shelon Henry, Diana Huey, Aaron Libby, Nathan Lucrezio, Melinda Porto, Shelby Ringdahl, Vishal Vaidya and Blake Zolfo.

Robert Bartley is the writer/director; he also created Broadway Backwards. Mary-Mitchell Campbell is the music supervisor and Ted Arthur is the music director.

As impressive as all of this is, the best thing about Broadway Backwards is that it is a great fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. To date these shows have raised nearly $4.4 million dollars! Each of the last three shows has raised over half a million dollars.

You can watch Broadway Backwards on the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS website and also on their YouTube channel. The show will remain available through 11:59 PM EDT on April 3rd only.

These three clips give you just a taste of what to expect. This is truly the highlight of the week. Tune in, donate if you can, and just wait to be blown away.

Photo: Broadway Backwards 2021 Logo (courtesy of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS)

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