I first met Bernadette Peters when we were both in a production of "The Boy Friend" (With Yvonne de Carlo) at the Wedgewood Dinner Theater in Glen Cove, Long Island. She had previously been a child performer starting at the age of three on the TV show "Juvenile Jury" and went on to many other venues of the day (She did "Name that Tune" when she was five.) And there are many other credits, I could relate. So, she was a seasoned performer when we met. Almost every night, after the performance of "The Boy Friend," and before we started the trek back into the city, a bunch of us would retire into the bar, where Bernadette would usually sing a number or two with the pianist. She was remarkable. She would turn a song like "You made me love you" into a soulful agony with tears streaming down her face as she neared the end. Just remarkable. Soon after she was doing "George M" on Broadway and "Dames at Sea' of...
The year was 2010. The Broadway Cares annual Christmas ornament was the incomparable Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in the Jerry Herman musical (with Michael Stewart providing the lyrics), "Hello Dolly." Beginning as a play in England, it was adapted into a French farce before falling into the hands of Thornton Wilder and becoming "The Merchant of Yonkers." With little success at the box-office Wilder revise it and presented it again as "The Matchmaker" in 1954 starring Ruth Gordon which in turn became a movie starring Shirley Booth in 1958. The producer David Merrick acquired the rights to make it a musical ("Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman" and "Call on Dolly" were two of the original titles) and he offered it to Ethel Merman and then Mary Martin, both of whom turned it down (Ironically, they both did it later.) To helm the project, Hal Prince, Jerome Robbins and Joe Layton were approached but with no agreement reached and ulti...
My Grandmother raised nine children, (seven girls and two boys.....my mother being the youngest.) She became a widow in 1935 when my grandfather was killed in an auto accident just north of our small town of Corbin, Kansas. From then on, she took turns living with her children for about a month at a time. Eventually, it was decided to build her a small one room house on my parents property where she could have her own space but be close at hand. (This "house" was constructed when I was thirteen or so.) A few years later, (now, in her eighties) she began receiving mail form an old beau that she had known in her youth and it soon blossomed into a certified romance. (A long distance one, but a romance nonetheless.) All of her children went into shock when she announced at the age of 89 that she and her reunited beau were going to be married! (Sadly, I no longer remember his name.... it may have been Leo.) At any rate, "Leo" made the trip from somewher...
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