All-Star Tribute to Cole Porter--Bell Telephone Hour on DVD

The collection of Bell Telephone Hour broadcasts are a treasure trove of notable performances from the 50s and 60s. I've previously seen some of the opera performers (Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland, etc), but had never seen an Hour with musical theater performers. Well, that streak ended with The Tribute to Cole Porter. This show offers 6 solo performers and a chorus in 48 songs of Porter in an hour. If you're doing the math that means each song gets about a minute and 7 seconds. The writers of this show seem particularly proud that they were able to cram in so many tunes, because they constantly have our hostess with the mostess Ethel Merman tell us how many songs they've hit on already.

As you might guess from the statistic above, most of the songs are presented in medley, and therein lies the problem for me. It's a little difficult to assess the strength or wit or structure of a song if you're only getting the chorus, or even less. I suppose if I had previously known most of the songs (as I assume many viewers in 1964 did) it may have triggered a memory, rather than making me wish I could hear the whole song.

The performers are uniformly good. Ms. Merman is built to be appreciated from a distance, in my opinion, and a lot of her in close-up is not always the best way to see or hear her. But she takes the heaviest load in this show; besides narrating between sets, she sings probably a third of the 48 songs. The rest of the cast includes John Raitt, Martha Wright, Gretchen Wyler, New York City Ballet star Jillana, and pianist Peter Nero. The Misses Wright and Wyler are new to me. Ms. Wright has a particularly pleasant voice that transitions well into the upper register. She reminds me a bit of Kelli O'Hara. Ms. Wyler is a character singer.

I got this DVD because I was interested in hearing more Cole Porter--I still am interested, but this broadcast did nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

The Cole Porter Tribute: A Bell Telephone Hour
Television presentation from 1964
Released on DVD in 2004
Cast: Ethel Merman, John Raitt, Martha Wright, Gretchen Wyler, Jillana, Peter Nero