Obscure Videos: '70s Specials
Anne Bancroft always said she wanted to do a Broadway musical, but she never got around to it, turning down Funny Girl and no doubt other offers as well. But on February 18, 1970, the country saw the dramatic actress in an Emmy-winning special that demonstrated how glamorous a musical star she might have been. Its full title was Annie: The Women in the Life of a Man, and the show consisted of a series of sketches, often musical, each allowing the star to appear as a different woman, with the male guests seen mostly as foils.
After a prologue in which we get the thoughts of a baby girl just before she's born, Bancroft, still at the height of her Graduate glamour, goes into a musical number called "Look At Us Now." Bancroft lip-synchs to her own tracks during the program, and the voice is deep, husky, and surprisingly confident and appealing.
In "Valerie," we are privy to the inner thoughts of a bride and groom as they march down the aisle. Dick Shawn is the groom, John McGiver the father of the bride, and Bancroft neatly registers a range of moods, from despair to elation. Next is the first in a series of three "Joanne" sketches, consisting of blank-verse poems by Judith Viorst. In each, Bancroft is a different contemporary woman, first explaining why "married is better," then offering her feelings on "the other woman," and finally pondering the nature of "true love."
In "Katharine," the star is a medieval lady, joined by six knights in full armor for an elaborate but arch song-and-dance routine choreography by Alan Johnson that embraces such musical puns as "The Night Was Made for Love," "You and the Night and the Music," and "Tonight."
Bancroft and Jack Cassidy are a pair of lovers engaged in a steamy embrace on a rug by an open fireplace in the spoof "Libby." At her sultriest, Bancroft still manages to bemoan the inequality of women, and how they're still "in shackles," even though she clearly has Cassidy wrapped around her finger.
As "Phyllis," the star reclines on an enormous rug textile company Monsanto produced the special and supplies a dandy rendition of the Styne-Loesser song "I Don't Want to Walk Without You, Baby." In "Eugenia," Bancroft is a drop-dead glamorous matron who is packing to leave. The man in her life is Metropolitan Opera baritone Robert Merrill, who sings "Stay" Sondheim-Rodgers, from Do I Hear a Waltz? to her, as she continues to toss garments into a suitcase. At song's end, the lady says she'll stay, and the man gets the tag line, "The things you have to do to keep a maid!"
In "Bebe," David Susskind appears as a producer who auditions a young hopeful for a new musical. Bancroft is the girl asked to sight-read the song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." Unfortunately, the girl takes the lyric at face value, and sings the phrases "potato-potahto," "tomato-tomahto" without differentiating between the pronunciations.
A somewhat obscure routine is "Trixie," in which an aging lady keeps on changing partners while singing Berlin's "Change Partners" as the decades shift from the '30s to the '60s. One of the dancers is Lee Roy Reams, who would, years later, appear in The Producers, written by Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks. The last man the lady in the sketch rejects is the famed dance instructor Arthur Murray.
In "Lillian," program producer Martin Charnin manages to sneak in a song from his recent musical flop music by Edward Thomas Mata Hari. Bancroft is a mother reading a letter from her soldier son. That letter becomes the song "Maman," sung by Dick Smothers. It's an anti-war number which must have seemed particularly pointed during the Vietnam period of the special.
Finally, there's the sketch for which this program became famous, "Paula," written by Thomas Meehan, who would go on to write Annie with Charnin and The Producers with Brooks. Here, Lee J. Cobb is a psychiatrist, and Bancroft his glamorous patient, relating the events of a recent nightmare in which she hosted a cocktail party for none other than Peruvian singer Yma Sumac. As Miss Sumac insisted that everyone at the party be on a first-name basis, the hostess was forced to introduce each new arrival to Yma. The guests include Ava Gardner, Abba Eban, Oona O'Neill, Ugo Betti, Ida Lupino, Ulu Grosbard, the Aga Khan, Mia Farrow, Gia Scala, and Uta Hagen. This leads, of course, to the celebrated series of introductions, i.e. Yma-Ava, Yma-Ulu, Yma-Abba, Yma-Uta, Yma-Gia, Yma-Mia, Yma-Ida, Yma-Ugo, Yma-Oona.
That routine was the most memorable of the night, but Bancroft tops it in her finale, singing one of Cole Porter's most haunting songs, "Ev'rytime We Say Goodbye," sporting a black dress and a long string of pearls and offering a knockout rendition of the number.
A far more conventional, star-and-guests event was The Beatrice Arthur Special, televised in early 1979 by CBS. Arthur had recently completed a six-year run for CBS as star of the sitcom Maude. Of course, prior to her years of sitcom fame, Arthur was an established musical theatre performers, her credits including The Threepenny Opera, Shoestring Revue, Fiddler on the Roof, Mame, and A Mother's Kisses. So perhaps it was part of her Maude contract that CBS provide the star with her very own prime-time musical special. And with guests Rock Hudson, Melba Moore, and Wayland Flowers and his campy Madame puppet, The Beatrice Arthur Special is a decidedly gay-friendly affair.
Arthur opens the show by singing "Hey There, Good Times," from the Cy Coleman score for I Love My Wife, a Broadway musical directed by Arthur's then-husband, Gene Saks. It becomes a production number in which she's joined by Hudson around the time he starred in the national company of On the Twentieth Century, Moore, and Madame. Alone, Arthur tries on various personas for her show, including spoofs of Carol Burnett, Dolly Parton, and Cher.
Arthur chats with Madame, who is hot for Rock. When asked about the age difference, the ancient Madame replies, "If he dies, he dies." The two ladies sing that old Mae West favorite, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."
In the first of the evening's sketches, Athur is the grieving widow at her husband's funeral. She's soon joined by two other grieving ladies, but Arthur is the model of understanding, telling them she knew all about their relationships with her husband. But then a grieving man arrives, and Arthur has the tagline, "Him, I didn't know about."
Alone, Arthur declares that she has always wanted to be a saloon singer, and so she performs "How Long Has This Been Going On?"
Arthur and Hudson discuss the new morality, then sing "Everybody Today Is Turning On," another song from I Love My Wife, allowing Hudson to sing about poppers and amyl nitrate.
In a notably weak sketch, Arthur appears as the mother of an absent Steve Martin, forcing Arthur to mimic Martin's trademark style and phrases. At the end, Arthur is joined by Maude co-star Conrad Bain, playing Martin's father.
Now it's Melba Moore's turn, and she performs a gayish disco anthem called "Miss Thing." Then Arthur and Moore join for a medley from the current Broadway musical Ain't Misbehavin'.
In a poignant sketch, a couple Arthur and Hudson observing their thirtieth wedding anniversary return to the hotel where they spent their honeymoon and acknowledge that something has gone wrong with their marriage.
Then it's on to a musical revival meeting, with Arthur as evangelist Sister Love, and Hudson, Moore, and Madame as former sinners.
For her closing solo, Arthur sings a musical-theatre collectible, again by Cy Coleman, "The Way I See It," from the road-closer Home Again, Home Again.