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

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Today it was announced that McKay had passed away. I don’t know the status of his follow-up documentary: Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age. The film had a work-in-progress screening at the 2016 Palm Springs International Film Festival. I hope, if it hasn’t been finished, that someone will complete the fine work McKay had no doubt done for that film. (IMDB shows a 2018 release date.)

I had the pleasure of speaking with Rick prior to the festival screening. The column I wrote for Los Angeles Magazine‘s website can be seen here.

Though a small part of what follows appears in the column, I wanted to share with you the full answer to my question: When you first went to a Broadway show, did you ever think your career would take you in this direction? How would that kid in the balcony (or wherever you sat) think of this trilogy of films you are doing and the experiences you’ve had making them?

The first show I saw, growing up in Indiana, I dreamed of living in Los Angeles or New York. I lived in Beach Grove, Indiana. My brother liked cast albums and he started ordering albums and so did I. I joined every record club I could join. I listened to the Applause album and this is All About Eve. I was ten years old. It was coming to Indianapolis with Lauren Bacall. I went nuts and my mother said I could use newspaper money and she would take me.

I don’t even know if that kid could comprehend how great the journey has become and what I’ve gotten back from it. I haven’t gotten rich. I still owe money on the first film. I did the second because I was worried that someone would make it and now I’m afraid someone wouldn’t. Before I moved to New York I was a scholarship dancer in NY. I saw the first tour of A Chorus Line in 1979. I sat there in my seat with tears running down my face. I said to myself, “I’m not going to be sitting in this Indiana theatre in 50 years watching a bus and truck production of A Chorus Line saying ‘I could have done something bigger.’”

I want to give back with these films to the things that gave back to me. There are so many of us in small towns all over the world that think they are the only ones who like these things. They go to bigger cities to find others like them. They don’t all have those opportunities. I feel like I’m making this film for the kid watching Lauren Bacall in Applause or A Chorus Line. People who never left those towns. That’s why I make them. Some of those shows and some of those people gave me the courage to fight for what I wanted. The theatre can do that more than movies often can.

Rest in Peace Rick.  Thank you.

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“We all said the second film was going to be easier,” McKay says. “It wasn’t. The financial market fell apart. I make the films by myself. It was really difficult to raise money. We don’t get major grants because we don’t do films about animals going extinct. This movie is about Broadway and stars. It was editing and shooting little by little and keeping it all going. It was worth the battle.”

In the first documentary, Broadway’s biggest stars (Bea Arthur, Alec Baldwin, Carol Burnett, Marlon Brando) talked not just about their own careers, but the performances and shows that inspired them. The second film covers shows from the late 1950s all the way through to A Chorus Line becoming the longest running show of all time. McKay’s volume of interviews and his ability to find rare footage means the films start out very long. “I still think that my first cuts at 17 hours are the best,” he says with a laugh. “But I couldn’t find anyone who would book it. I look at editing these films with 100 people’s interviews like throwing a dinner party. You separate husbands and wives so they can have different people to talk to. Since I’m the interviewer, lighting guy, and cameraman, I can say ‘so and so said’ and then eliminate my question and have one person respond to the other.”

For McKay, the most exciting discovery included in the new film is footage of Liza Minnelli subbing for Gwen Verdon in Chicago opposite Chita Rivera. “I didn’t know that Liza replaced Gwen. She was never advertised. I have the full ‘Nowadays’ and ‘Hot Honey Rag.’ I think of that as the Holy Grail in this film. Candy Brown, the ultimate Fosse dancer, did Liza with a Z and Pippin. Thank God she was shooting home movies—her dad had given her an 8mm camera. It shot home movies with sound. Who today could go on stage in Chicago in 5 days, learning the lead role and sing and dance, who is in their 20s who already has won an Oscar and a Tony? There aren’t that many people with that kind of staggering training.”

Philosopher George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” inspires McKay. “The tagline for my mission statement is ‘Creating the future by preserving the past,’” McKay says. “I have interns who are theatre majors who don’t know anyone in the film. I showed them a chapter with Liza, [Robert] Redford, Glenn Close, and others, and they didn’t know any one of them. Charles Durning talks about going to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and being thrown out. He said ‘I stood in the wings and studied people.’ Chita talks about being in the wings and studying [Ethel] Merman. Others talk about standing in the wings and studying Chita. With today’s actors, everyone goes downstairs and gets on their cell phone.”

Finding solace in the theatre as a young boy growing up in Indiana is one reason McKay is doing these films. “I haven’t gotten rich,” he says. “I still owe money on the first film. I did the second because I was worried that someone would make it, and now I’m afraid someone wouldn’t. There are so many of us in small towns all over the world that think they are the only ones who like these things. They go to bigger cities to find others like them. I feel like I’m making this film for the people who never left those towns. Some of these shows and some of these people gave me the courage to find what I wanted. The theatre can do that more than movies often can.”

Originally published at LAMag.com on January 6, 2016

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