Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey On Broadway--television broadcast on DVD

Yes, the title says they were on Broadway and in many ways they were, but Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey On Broadway was really on television--ABC in June of 1969 to be more exact.

Both of these performers were already icons by the time they presented this hour-long production. And while it touches on some of the most famous aspects of their careers (Carol sings "Girl from Little Rock", Pearl sings "Bill Bailey"), the true delights for me were the unexpected items.

Ms. Channing sings a surprisingly restrained and effective "If I Were a Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. She also performs two hysterical sketches which I assume are from her stage show; she performs a song in German (or maybe it's mock German) as Marlene Dietrich and does a monologue as a former silent film star. Both are very polished acts and still work today.

Ms. Bailey moves non-stop around the stage, making it a challenge to record her both visually and vocally. It feels a little too casual at times for me, and I wished for more slower-paced stuff apart from "Little Green Apples."

Are there performers that could get this kind of project broadcast today? Maybe Queen Latifah or Jennifer Hudson. It certainly wouldn't be on broacast television, but something like Bravo, or A and E. Hugh Jackman could get a one-off musical television show of the ground (he tried with that short-lived Laughlin, Nevada, but that was a series, not a special). Idina Menzel? Kristin Chenoweth? Rita Moreno? Carol Burnett? How about Ron Raines from "Days of our Lives"? (See correction in comments). He's had a busy musical career all the while doing the soap. Would it take them all being together? Perhaps television is a lost venue for Broadway style musical performance.

Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey On Broadway
Filmed at the Winter Garden Theater
Broadcast on ABC in June 1969
Cast: Just those two

Carmen Jones--film on DVD

What an attractive cast. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte must be two of the sexiest people ever to be on film, and they are together and at the height of their appeal in Otto Preminger's film version of Carmen Jones, which uses the general story and music from Bizet's opera Carmen in a new setting with new lyrics and dialogue by Oscar Hammerstein II.

While Dandridge and Belafonte are both singers, we hear neither of their singing voices in this film, due to the extreme vocal ranges for Carmen's and Joe's roles. A young Marilyn Horne supplies the vocals for Carmen. Knowing Ms. Horne's voice well from her storied opera career, it is interesting to hear her morph her sound to make it fit Dandridge's physicality. The voice is completely unrecognizable as Horne's, but sounds very much as if it could be Dandridge's. Whomever sings for Belafonte is less successful.

I love the music of Bizet's Carmen, which forms the basis of this score, although I've never seen it in an opera house. I did see the Peter Brook version that played at Lincoln Center in the 80s. It was a bit of a cross between the opera and a theatre piece, although I don't recall much of it other than it was the first time I had seen fire live on stage, and the iconic tableau of Don Jose squeezing the orange into Carmen's mouth.

According to the broadway database, there has not been a Broadway remount of this show since the 1940s. A lot of the dialogue and lyrics seem dated and stereotypical by today's standards, but I wonder if this show would work in a concert setting? Everytime I heard Pearl Bailey speak or sing, I kept imagining Queen Latifah. Audra McDonald could certainly sing Carmen. I don't know about the role of Joe, but how about Brian Stokes Mitchell singing Husky Miller (who sings the Toreodor song)?

Carmen Jones
Music by Georges Bizet
Lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II
Film directed and produced by Otto Preminger
Released in 1954
Cast: Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Joe Adams