LEGENDS #1 ANGELA LANSBURY

In 2008 the "Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids" organization began producing and selling a series of Christmas Ornaments dubbed "Legends" with all proceeds going to their cause.  I have bought the new ornament each year and thought I would share them with you as well as the provenance of the ornament.  The first was Angela Lansbury.

What started as a best-selling book called "Auntie Mame" by Patrick Dennis was quickly to become a Broadway play starring Rosalind Russell in the title role, for which she received a Tony nomination.  Soon after, Ms. Russell repeated the role on film and garnered an Oscar nomination.  (The award went to Susan Hayward for "I Want to Live")

Then, it was only a matter of time until it returned to the Broadway stage as a full-blown musical, "Mame" with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, the book by Jerome Lawrence and  Robert Edwin Lee and starring Angela Lansbury who won the Tony Award in 1966.   The musical was also nominated also but lost out to "Man of La Mancha."

Alas, in 1974 it returned once more to the screen (as a musical starring Lucille Ball) which was unfortunately an unqualified disaster, partly because Ms. Ball was filmed through linoleum (diffused to the max).

But the ornament, pictured below accompanied by a photo from the Broadway show captures the fun of that wonderful performance by Ms. Lansbury during "The Man in the Moon is a Lady" number. (Side note:  The ornament has Ms. Lansbury holding a bugle as an homage to the number "If he Walked into my Life." but there was no bugle on the moon.)

I'm happy to say I saw the show in Philadelphia during it's out-of-town tryout and despite the three hour running time, (the powers that be later did a lot of trimming) I knew I was witnessing magic.
And now that magic is on my Christmas tree!




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