You Will Believe a Man Can Sing Badly

This is NOT the Broadway production. It’s a TV version done in 1975 with Leslie Ann Warren as Lois Lane. The title was It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… Superman! It was produced at a time when camp was thought to equal wit and there was a fashion for long titles. I vaguely remember it opening around the time I was first in New York. I bet the score is better than anything in Spiderman.

Everybody and everything in this clip is terrible. Even LAW, who’s an accomplished and polished performer. Its only saving grace is that we’re spared the sight of Jack Cassidy. Julie Taymor is getting a minimum of $9,000 a week from Whatever, so I think she’s OK.

It was around this time that I did some under-5 work on one of the soaps that used to be shot in NYC. They used to give fairly steady work to a whole gang of New York actors. One of the leads had been off for a few weeks to open in a new musical, the first to ever break the million dollar budget causing a great scandal. Imagine. Tickets probably cost upwards of 11 dollars. Anyhoo, the show was panned and closed its first night. We were all so shocked. (A friend in London was in a show that closed during the interval on the first night. They just sent the audience home)

30 or 40 shows would open in a season. There might be upwards of 20 new musicals. It wasn’t uncommon for dancers to be in four or five shows in a year. Hence the term ‘gypsies.’ Nowadays, you get a job in a hit you stick with it till it closes.

It was a simpler time.

I probably would have watched it… and then later been ashamed seeing it. That’s how I feel about the Star Wars Xmas special.

TJ, but Santorum may have been involved: Gay immigrant-boinking Ariz sheriff now in nasty public dispute with wacky sister over allegations of student-boinking: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-paul-babeu-arizona-sheriff-20120228,0,6363707.story. This has “family values” written all over it.