DVDs: One Last Kiss

A famous "sleeper" hit, the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie introduced to Broadway composer Charles Strouse, lyricist Lee Adams, director-choreographer Gower Champion, librettist Michael Stewart, and the sounds of rock 'n' roll. Opening with little fanfare, Birdie won six Tonys, including Best Musical, and it was only natural that this send-up of teen pop idols would be made into a movie.

For the film of Bye Bye Birdie, Columbia Pictures retained two of the Broadway leading men, Dick Van Dyke playing Albert Peterson, the manager of rock 'n' roll star Conrad Birdie, and Paul Lynde, as the father of the Sweet Apple, Ohio teenager Conrad is scheduled to kiss on "The Ed Sullivan Show" prior to departing for the army. Hired to play opposite Van Dyke in the role created on Broadway by Chita Rivera was Janet Leigh.

In the transition from stage to screen, Leigh lost four of Rivera's songs, "An English Teacher," "Normal American Boy," "What Did I Ever See in Him?," and "Spanish Rose," while Van Dyke lost "Baby, Talk to Me." But Strouse and Adams composed a new title song for the film, brazenly performed at the beginning and end of the film by Ann-Margret. Playing Kim McAfee, the young woman Conrad is slated to kiss on national television, Ann-Margret would be showcased in the Birdie film at the expense of Leigh.

If five songs were dropped, the film, directed by George Sidney Show Boat, Kiss Me, Kate, Pal Joey and choreographed by Onna White stage and film Music Man, veered even more radically away from Stewart's stage script. Although the fundamental situation of the plot remained the same in Irving Brecher's screenplay, Albert was no longer an aspiring English teacher but instead a former biochemist. This allowed for ludicrous new comic scenes involving a Moscow Ballet company performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," where, in order to make time for Conrad's appearance on the telecast, Albert's chemical formula that has previously sped up turtles is deployed to speed up the pace of the ballet's conductor.

Playing Conrad Birdie was Jesse Pearson, who had taken the role in a road company of the stage version. An actual, if minor, teen singing idol, Bobby Rydell, played Kim's boyfriend, Hugo. Ed Sullivan appeared as himself. Maureen Stapleton was amusing as Albert's impossible mother, Mae, a songless character in the show who was allowed in the film to join in on "Kids." In another musical alteration, Albert and Rosie share "Put on a Happy Face," a number that in the show saw Albert cheering up one of Conrad's disconsolate young fans.

While the 1963 film, available on a Columbia DVD, is valuable for its preservation of Van Dyke and Lynde and is fun to watch as a trip back to the early '60s, it is remarkably unfaithful to the stage Birdie, jettisoning most of Stewart's dialogue and much of his plotting. This situation would be remedied more than thirty years later when Bye Bye Birdie got a remake, in a film whose fall 2004 DVD release from Sterling I only recently became aware of.

In 1991, a new national tour of Bye Bye Birdie was sent out by producers Barry and Fran Weissler. It co-starred Tommy Tune and Ann Reinking the latter eventually replaced by Lenora Nemetz, introduced Susan Egan as Kim and Marc Kudisch as Birdie, and was directed by Gene Saks. A critical and financial success, the tour of Birdie would no doubt have found a welcome on Broadway, but Tune declined to return to Broadway in a revival, so the production did not go on to New York.

But this tour, along with the 1993 success of the television remake of Gypsy starring Bette Midler, inspired a new film version of Birdie. In 1995, ABC telecast this three-hour, made-for-TV remake of Birdie, directed by Saks, choreographed by Reinking, and retaining Kudisch as Birdie. The leads were taken by experienced musical-theatre performer Jason Alexander and Vanessa Williams, who had recently made a splash on Broadway by taking on another Chita Rivera part, the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Playing Alexander's mother was Tyne Daly, while George Wendt played Lynde's role, and Sally Mayes played Wendt's wife.

In the '91 tour, Tune was given a new Strouse-Adams song, "A Giant Step," and it was also used in the new film. But the film added two more new songs, one for Williams' Rose "Let's Settle Down" and one for Daly's Mae "A Mother Doesn't Matter Anymore". It included an expanded version of the first film's title song, sung by a group of young Conrad Birdie fans in an added scene. There was also a new reprise of "What Did I Ever See in Him?" for Alexander, plus new lyrics for "Spanish Rose."

In addition to the three new songs and the title song, the remake included all of the original stage songs. More significantly, the screenplay was based closely on Stewart's original stage book, with only minor and uncredited changes.

There's not a ton of chemistry between Alexander and Williams, but separately they satisfy. If Alexander isn't the all-around musical-comedy man that Van Dyke was, he's a plausible choice for Albert. Williams is a vivacious Rose, and Tyne Daly is excellent as Mae. But a major liability is Chynna Phillips, who looks too old to be a teenager and makes a resistible Kim.

The '95 TV remake is somewhat short on charm and humor. But at least one feels one is seeing the real Birdie, which can't be said for the first film. But it's possible to view the two films as complementary, with the first notable for its mindless zest, the second for its faithful record of the original musical.

Encores!' mediocre 2004 production of Birdie probably destroyed the show's chances of a Broadway return, at least for the time being. So Birdie remains one of the all-time most popular musicals still without a Broadway revival.