This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Aaron Albano: You're listening to Tony Telecasts from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:12] Mo Brady: And I'm Mo Brady.

[0:22] Aaron Albano: Welcome listeners to our miniseries about the Tonys, bringing you all the drama behind the drama of a theater season in Broadway history.

[0:30] Mo Brady: In each podcast episode, we watch a telecast of the previous Tony Awards, not only the performances but the opening and the speeches to see how it reflects the season as a whole. So let's dive in and talk about the 1982 Tony Awards.

[0:44] Aaron Albano: The 36th annual Tony Awards were held on June 6, 1982 and hosted by Tony Randall. That season there were a number of Broadway theaters being demolished to make way for the Marriott Marquis, so the theme of the telecast was to celebrate a great Broadway theater at the home of that night's celebration, the Imperial.

[1:05] Mo Brady: Going into the awards ceremony, Dreamgirls led the pack with 13 nominations, followed closely by 12 nominations for the musical Nine. The original production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was nominated for seven awards, while the fourth contender, Pump Boys and Dinettes, was nominated for just one. Best musical. It's pretty obvious.

[1:24] Aaron Albano: All right, only one musical was nominated for Best Revival, a Rex Harrison-led production of My Fair Lady.

[1:31] Mo Brady: But aside from the telecast itself, what was happening at the time, Aaron?

[1:36] Aaron Albano: Besides you being alive before me, Mo?

[1:39] Mo Brady: Besides me being alive and you not being alive in 1982.

[1:42] Aaron Albano: Plenty. The 1981-1982 season spread across President Ronald Reagan's first two years in office and saw the appointment of Sondra Day O'Connor, the first woman to become a Supreme Court justice.

[1:55] Mo Brady: The Cold War was alive and well, with tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union consistently on the minds of the American people.

[2:02] Aaron Albano: In New York, the Broadway community saw its own crisis and tragedy, referred to by some as the Great Theater Massacre of 1982. To make room for what is now known as the Marriott Marquis, including its theater, in an attempt to renovate the Times Square area, an agreement between the Broadway League and then-NYC Mayor Ed Koch led to the destruction of five Broadway houses, known as the Fallen Five: the Morosco, the Helen Hayes, which was originally called the Fulton, the Bijou, the Victoria, originally known as the Gayety, and the Astor.

[2:36] Mo Brady: The order was opposed and protested by members of the theater industry, including the Publix, Joe Papp, Colleen Dewhurst, Estelle Parsons, Treat Williams, Richard Gere, and Susan Sarandon, and as seen in the telecast, was very actively traumatizing to the community at large.

[2:51] Aaron Albano: Oh, I need a vacation from more of the same old thing.

[3:00] Mo Brady: This is a weird one.

[3:01] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[3:02] Mo Brady: This is a weird, it's so weird.

[3:04] Aaron Albano: It is so weird.

[3:05] Mo Brady: I mean, knowing the context, I get why it's so weird now, but it's very jarring how weird it is.

[3:12] Aaron Albano: And thinking back to what we were just telling listeners, 36, this is the 36th annual Tony Awards. I think now when we watch Tony Awards 30, 40 years later, it's like, oh, this is a thing that has so much history and we are expecting it to fit into a norm.

[3:33] Mo Brady: 36th is still pretty young.

[3:35] Aaron Albano: Absolutely. They're still playing with the form, or maybe if they're not playing with the form, the form is different than it is now because it's almost twice as old now.

[3:46] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[3:47] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[3:48] Mo Brady: Like when we watch the Tonys now, it's very like high number Tony Awards, which I just gloss over and I'm like, oh, what number are we on? Cool. 36th is like a real number that is not high, where you're still making room to make it the thing that it wants to become.

[4:09] Aaron Albano: Yeah. It's still figuring out its own identity.

[4:12] Mo Brady: Is that the right word to use?

[4:13] Aaron Albano: I don't know.

[4:14] Mo Brady: Sure.

[4:15] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[4:16] Mo Brady: It's coming out.

[4:17] Aaron Albano: It's coming out in its 30s. And so because we're early in its life, we're seeing this very, to me, strange.

[4:27] Mo Brady: Yes.

[4:28] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[4:29] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[4:30] Aaron Albano: Okay. So before we talk about what makes it so strange, how's that for a cliffhanger? Let's pour, let's pour one out for the non-nominated musicals.

[4:36] Mo Brady: And there were a lot of nominated musicals.

[4:41] Aaron Albano: So there were four non-nominated high profile revivals.

[4:47] Mo Brady: Okay.

[4:48] Aaron Albano: Fiddler on the Roof at Lincoln Center, Camelot at the Winter Garden, Little Me at the Eugene O'Neill, and Little Johnny Jones, which is a George M. Cohen show at the Alvin Theater.

[4:58] Mo Brady: Wow. Do you know, were they still running during Tony's time or?

[5:03] Aaron Albano: You know, I don't know if they were still running. I do know that Little Me, the two lead performers were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

[5:11] Mo Brady: Okay.

[5:12] Aaron Albano: Victor Garber being the nominee for Best Actor.

[5:14] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[5:15] Aaron Albano: And I can tell you that Little Johnny Jones, the Alvin was not running because it ran for one performance.

[5:21] Mo Brady: Wow.

[5:22] Aaron Albano: So he did not do well that season. In terms of new musicals, we had The Supporting Cast at the Biltmore, it was a five person show that ran 36 performances. Marlowe at the Rialto, it ran for 48 performances.

[5:36] Mo Brady: Lisa Mordente was nominated for Best Actress, that's Chita Rivera's daughter.

[5:40] Aaron Albano: Wow, that's awesome.

[5:41] Mo Brady: And sort of most interesting for me, Marlowe was at the Rialto, which was a Broadway theater on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway. Not one of these fallen five, a different Broadway theater, which was not torn down, but converted into an adult movie house and then torn down in 2002.

[5:58] Aaron Albano: This is where the chase sign is now where you see the like, oh, yeah, like Kevin Hart or Property Brothers.

[6:05] Mo Brady: Yeah, video above the Steve Madden shoes.

[6:07] Aaron Albano: That used to be a Broadway theater also, man, they all used to be Broadway theaters.

[6:12] Mo Brady: Everything used to be a Broadway theater.

[6:14] Aaron Albano: All right. What surprised me most was that Merrily We Roll Along was the season.

[6:19] Mo Brady: That's amazing to me. I did not put that together that this was that season.

[6:22] Aaron Albano: I didn't realize that we were going to see nothing from Merrily We Roll Along.

[6:27] Mo Brady: Sure we know it's a flop, but it's also a Sondheim flop. So I thought it'd be nominated for something.

[6:30] Aaron Albano: I mean, but again, like we say that because we're looking at it as history. Like those were real time events and they were just like, this sucked.

[6:43] Mo Brady: No, nothing. Next.

[6:45] Aaron Albano: Yeah. So nominated that season was the first at the Martin Beck, which was starring David Allen Greer as Jackie Robinson. He was nominated as well.

[6:52] Mo Brady: 27.

[6:55] Aaron Albano: Is there life after high school at the Barrymore, which ran 12 performances and Scott Bacula was an understudy.

[7:00] Mo Brady: Scott Bacula.

[7:05] Aaron Albano: This is just going to be a Scott Bacula stand.

[7:08] Mo Brady: Apparently it's turning into that.

[7:09] Aaron Albano: And the final non nominee musical of the season was The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas at the Eugene O'Neill, which ran for 63 performances. This was a new show at this point.

[7:17] Mo Brady: Wow.

[7:20] Aaron Albano: Okay. I feel like that and Merrily We Roll Along definitely like withstood the flop status because we know more about them than Marlowe.

[7:28] Mo Brady: For sure.

[7:29] Aaron Albano: Okay. So let's get to talk about this telecast.

[7:31] Mo Brady: Let's get to the telecast.

[7:32] Aaron Albano: Okay. What do you think, Aaron?

[7:34] Mo Brady: Okay. Okay. Here. Let's just, let's just go in. What was nice is we got our intro of the shows that were on Broadway this season, which was very cool.

[7:43] Aaron Albano: Okay. So then it's followed by not an opening number.

[7:47] Mo Brady: No, no opening number instead.

[7:49] Aaron Albano: So Tony Randall, cause I, there was no like title card or like lower third where I was like, who is this? Should I know who this is? Who dat?

[7:57] Mo Brady: But he's in the audience, role playing a critic, which then continues for the entire thing. I was like, I don't understand this premise.

[8:05] Aaron Albano: I mean, can you imagine in 2020, if we did an entire Tony awards ceremony where someone was playing Ben Brantley, not even Ben Brantley, like just nondescript critic that gets to read all critics' reviews as if they wrote it? It was such a strange, I mean, from where we sit, like, it's just strange not to have an opening number.

[8:31] Mo Brady: Yeah. And then it's like doubly strange that this is like, not even like Angela Lansbury with dancers miming M. Butterfly.

[8:40] Aaron Albano: Yeah. This is like one step less exciting than that.

[8:44] Mo Brady: If 1991 was the year of the musical actor, is this the year of the critic?

[8:48] Aaron Albano: Like?

[8:49] Mo Brady: The year of the critic.

[8:50] Aaron Albano: Oh my God. It's so weird.

[8:51] Mo Brady: Could be famous, could be a big success.

[8:53] Aaron Albano: Could be famous, could be a big success.

[8:54] Mo Brady: Strange as it seems.

[8:55] Aaron Albano: This was a hollowed evening.

[9:07] Mo Brady: You can barely hear anyone talking in the audience, even though you hear a lot of coughing.

[9:12] Aaron Albano: I think now the tagline for the Tony Awards is Broadway's biggest night.

[9:16] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[9:17] Aaron Albano: Right. And this was Tony Randall calls it the annual theatrical rite of spring.

[9:21] Mo Brady: There's something that's just like more stately about the thing.

[9:25] Aaron Albano: Sure.

[9:26] Mo Brady: Yeah.

[9:27] Aaron Albano: And he says, we will be seeing the four musicals nominated as the theater season's best.

[9:32] Mo Brady: And we will also be reminiscing about the glorious theater we are sitting in the Imperial on 45th street.

[9:38] Aaron Albano: And man, that is true.

[9:40] Mo Brady: Absolutely. It was, I almost feel like this was like a campaign to like prove how valuable the Imperial and therefore all Broadway theaters are to save.

[9:50] Aaron Albano: Let's let our audiences in on the secret here.

[9:53] Mo Brady: Okay, let's go.

[9:54] Aaron Albano: The two hour telecast features a 31 minute medley celebrating the Imperial theater called the Imperial medley.

[10:05] Mo Brady: Literally one fourth of the telecast is one medley.

[10:11] Aaron Albano: It's like a full musical theater history lesson.

[10:14] Mo Brady: It is a show.

[10:15] Aaron Albano: It is a show.

[10:16] Mo Brady: It is a full review of the Imperial theater, like the life and times of the Imperial theater.

[10:22] Aaron Albano: Okay. Tony Randall sits in a chair, all drowsy chaperones man in chair feels very much like that he's playing this critic, every critic with his giant Bible book, and he reads reviews in between performances of songs from musicals that played the Imperial since its opening in 1923.

[10:39] Unknown speaker: Starting with Rosemary, everyone's favorite, where we see a dozen Mounties, Robert Goulet and Lucy Arnaz. Okay, this is where it gets crazy to me. Okay, so you're like, oh, wow, that's a full song of Rosemary. Yeah, great. But then, okay, gets three songs and six minutes of screen time. This is a medley where one show gets three songs and six minutes of screen time. Leslie Uggams singing Someone to Watch Over Me. Which live! Perfect. No qualms. No notes. So good. Yeah. And then a song I think called Do Do Do and then Clap Your Hands. These are dance breaks. There are dance breaks in these songs. It's a fully produced sequence. In the world where I think, oh, if you're not a nominated musical, you have to pay a quarter of a million dollars to perform on the Tony Awards.

That's sort of like the rule of thumb I've heard, right? Who paid for this? Who paid for the costumes? Who paid for the rehearsals? I mean, this is just massive. Yes. And it's not selling a thing other than... Then keep theater alive. Please don't tear us down. Yes. And it just speaks to how like, it wasn't that long ago and yet a different time in our industry. For sure. Yeah. So I like the numbers were great. And we cut to commercial and I'm like, cool, that was nice. That was a great sequence about the Imperial. We come back from commercial and it's still going. And I said, wait, we're not done yet? No, because Cher performs My Heart Belongs to Daddy dressed in fur on an iceberg. Yes, she does.

There's a performance of a song called There's a Small Hotel from On Your Toes. It's a Rodgers and Hart tune. Some very good dancing done by an unnamed pas de deux. Oh, yes, absolutely. Then a second commercial, which I was like, okay, now we have to be done. Because in the span of like a sequence and a half between commercials, there has been no awards. There's been zero awards. Oh, don't worry, because then there's after the second commercial, Ben Vereen performs By Myself and then delivers the Best Choreography Award, which I was like, okay, cool. Now it's done. And then we go back to the medley where we see songs from One Touch of Venus, Song of Norway, and then three Irving Berlin songs from Miss Liberty, Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam.

And there's no ending. Did you notice like I was like waiting for someone to be like, and that's the end of the medley? No, because it's not the end. Then there's another seven minute medley about the Imperial more medley called the Capsule Medley, which I was like, okay, so now it's just like a summary medley. Anne Miller gives a tap dance led version of Just No Time At All, which then leads to like a singalong where with Anne Miller as like the bouncy ball, right? She's leading the audience at the Tony Awards through a singalong of a song from Pippin, which originated at the Imperial. But it's the most stately reserved, you just tore down five of our theater audiences. You don't see the audience being joyous.

It's the most awkward moment. It's deliciously awkward. And then we finally end the entire sequence with Dreamgirls' performance at the Tonys, because they are the current residents of the Imperial, which we'll get to that talk in a second. How did you feel about this Imperial medley sequence?

[14:27] Unknown speaker: It was the most interesting and the absolute opposite of what I expect from a Tony Awards ceremony, which is a two to three hour commercial for shows I should spend my money on.

[14:40] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[14:41] Unknown speaker: This was like a PBS documentary.

[14:43] Unknown speaker: Yeah, it absolutely was. And again, like knowing the context of it, I get it because this is a community in mourning. This is a community that's hurting. And all they want and need is this like televised plea of please save us, like the legacy of what we do. Yeah. And everybody in it is wonderful.

[15:08] Unknown speaker: Oh, yeah. Lucy Arnaz, Robert Goulet, Leslie Uggams. So well done. And so unlike anything we would see on the Tonys today.

[15:32] Unknown speaker: All right, let's talk about these numbers. What was the first nominated performance?

[15:35] Unknown speaker: The first nominated performance was Pump Boys and Dinettes, I Need a Vacation.

[15:41] Unknown speaker: Okay, firstly, do you know anything about Pump Boys and Dinettes?

[15:44] Unknown speaker: No.

[15:44] Unknown speaker: According to this Tony Award performance, it has two women who are playing waitresses, I think?

[15:50] Unknown speaker: I think so. Because it's a diner, right?

[15:52] Unknown speaker: Right. It's a young Debra Monk and a young Cass Morgan. They have great voices. They do like a medley of three just fine songs. Like the first minute of which is acapella, which I was like, work, they sound great. This played the Princess Theater, which is another theater that no longer exists. If you wanted to know where the Princess Theater was, it is the back of the Renaissance Hotel on 48th Street. So basically, if you went to like the Olive Garden, that is where we have now instead of the Princess Theater.

[16:23] Unknown speaker: That is bleak. What once held Pump Boys and Dinettes now has unlimited breadsticks.

[16:28] Unknown speaker: What I thought was like, this is fine. It is wild. This was the best musical went up against Merrily We Roll Along.

[16:35] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[16:36] Unknown speaker: Merrily We Roll Along is a messy show at times, but there's some good stuff in it, right?

[16:41] Unknown speaker: It's a musical. It is a story.

[16:45] Unknown speaker: The reverence we have for Merrily We Roll Along, especially watching Best Worst Thing That Ever Happened, they, more than anything, are like, yeah, everybody loves this show now. At the time that we put this on, no one liked us. And even that documentary runs the narrative of how Prince and Stephen Sondheim were almost like the two men on top of their mountain that the industry was rooting to fail at some point. So this was the time. So looking back, I'm like, wow, this was up against this masterpiece of Merrily We Roll Along. Especially if, was Pump Boys and Dinettes still open at this time?

[17:26] Unknown speaker: Yeah, Pump Boys and Dinettes ran for a few years.

[17:30] Unknown speaker: You look at the show and you're like, that is a fine time. That is probably cheap to run. It's probably cheap to tour. And so, you know, with a cast of six actor musicians, I'm sure that it ran for as long as it possibly could.

[17:42] Unknown speaker: So there's like the one familiar thing that exists in this Tony Awards season that's reminiscent of where we are now is that one was closed, one was open.

[17:52] Unknown speaker: Of course, that one's going to be nominated.

[17:54] Unknown speaker: Sure, sure.

[17:55] Unknown speaker: Yeah.

[17:55] Unknown speaker: Second performance.

[17:57] Unknown speaker: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

[18:00] Unknown speaker: My first lull about this was in a show with a 12 minute Megamix, they created a different Megamix.

[18:04] Unknown speaker: Which I had the same thought, but then I was like, wait, I feel like the Megamix was the invention of the revival. I don't think it existed yet.

[18:15] Unknown speaker: I think you're totally right. So this was like, this is like a prototype of the Joseph Megamix, basically, because they basically took you through like a verse and a chorus of half the songs of the show. Yeah, literally the whole thing.

[18:27] Unknown speaker: Do you like Joseph Aaron Albano?

[18:29] Unknown speaker: I like it now. I definitely went through my like wave of I'm 11. I don't know of any better. I'm now a high school student to my college student be like, this is garbage. And now I've come around to be like, this is a campy mess. And I love every second of it, especially when you have a belting narrator like Lori Beachman.

[18:51] Unknown speaker: Right. Lori Beachman is the belting narrator that started all belting narrators.

[18:57] Unknown speaker: Correct. She was Elphaba before Elphaba. Like like Fez with the tassel, those big eyes with the big eyelashes and just like Charlie Brown mouth giving you like...

[19:10] Unknown speaker: It's glorious. She was my favorite part of this whole performance.

[19:15] Unknown speaker: This felt like the best TheatreWorks tour you could ever see.

[19:20] Unknown speaker: 100%. Absolutely.

[19:22] Unknown speaker: So it was like the best student matinee you've ever seen.

[19:26] Unknown speaker: And yet like not a Broadway show by what we would call a Broadway show today.

[19:30] Unknown speaker: Of course not. I mean, it was fine. It was cute. Like it was Neri, a BIPOC actor in sight.

[19:37] Unknown speaker: Oh my gosh, the most blonde Joseph, like the most blonde Middle Eastern man in the universe.

[19:44] Unknown speaker: Yes, which I was like, wow, this is 1982. Here we go.

[19:50] Unknown speaker: Dream Girls.

[20:02] Unknown speaker: Dream... Dream Girls.

[20:04] Unknown speaker: Clutch your pearls, Aaron, and tell us about this performance of It's All Over and I Am Telling You from Dream Girls.

[20:12] Unknown speaker: Well, talk about an iconic performance from every Musical Mondays, because I'm familiar with this from every last call, because that's how we knew it was time to go home.

[20:24] Unknown speaker: So this is the last video they would play at Musical Mondays.

[20:28] Unknown speaker: In its entirety.

[20:33] Unknown speaker: So we have Dream Girls performing It's All Over and I'm Telling You in their theatre, as we stated before, this is their theatre. They live at the Imperial. And so we get all of the context leading from It's All Over into I'm Telling You, into the end of Act One, which is what, like a nine minute?

[20:51] Unknown speaker: It is so long to watch a musical sequence and it just lands. It's so riveting. It's so good. It's full transparency. This is the first time I've ever seen it.

[21:01] Unknown speaker: Sober?

[21:02] Unknown speaker: A, stone cold sober. B, like, not in a gay bar where all the queens are singing along. And riveted. Just so like, it's, it's the only, like, talk about like this hallowed evening. This is the number where the audience goes wild.

[21:19] Mo Brady: Not only did they go wild at the end, we get a mid-number ovation at the last chorus where everybody goes wild. What I've always known this performance for is Jennifer Holliday's vocals, right? Okay. That's like the Musical Monday side of this, right? Sure, yes. She is singing a great musical theater song in a great way that she brought into the world, right? Yes. And that is all very true. And this is a very well-written musical theater sequence. Yeah. Yes. With one had just won their Tony, two more people are going to win their Tony who we're seeing in this performance. And Jennifer Holliday is acting for you. This is not just like a park and bark. She is taking you on a journey. Yes. Well, I mean, and what's brilliant is that like, because we got the entire sequence, if they had just done "And I'm Telling You," it would have been about her vocals.

Because we got the moment before, that's when we got a scene. Even if you haven't seen the show, you got her journey into this number and you walked up. It's so compelling. It's what we talked about with Alice Ripley in the Next to Normal performance, but like times seven. And the show comes off like a real theater, like a like a real good musical. Yeah. Doesn't win best musical. Yes. Literally shocked. Like after this performance, I'm like, so they won. So they won, right? And then they don't. Nine happen. Who does win?

[22:54] Aaron Albano: All right. So Nine, they do "Be Italian." It opens on a tableau of the full female cast and all white. It's very beautiful. And then there is a performance by one of the women of Nine singing "Be Italian" with four boys giving you core strength and choreographed reactions. I mean, this is crawling with their knee pads. This is the most Will Rogers Follies version of an Italian story you've ever seen in your entire life. Tommy Tune, you got to get a gimmick, I guess. Mr. Americana giving you like nothing Italian and just like a Broadway spectacle. It's a tambourine number. Yeah, it's so funny to see. Oh, nine years later, you're gonna win choreography for another tambourine number. I guess what this is teaching us is that the American Theater Wing loves a tambourine, loves a prop.

[23:46] Mo Brady: Yeah. But at the same time, like, I dug the tambourine because you have this like sultry woman singing "Be Italian." And then we get the dance break, quote unquote, with the tambourine. Yeah, where they sit and play a tambourine, which is fully the Will Rogers Follies. Yes, I thought it was again, I thought it was fine. Based on these performances. Should it have beaten Dreamgirls? I would have been like, wait, what when Nine's name came out of the envelope? But nah, not for two reasons.

[24:26] Aaron Albano: Okay, Mr. Albano. One is white cis men rule the American theater. And so this show that was created by and for the white cis men to watch all of the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful white women on stage. Yes, that's fair is going to win. And then perhaps less cynically, what a sad time. What a sad time to be a part of our industry. And you can watch the show about a woman that basically gets like, goes into her own emotional spiral because people abandon her. Or you watch this sort of Italian fantasy full of beautiful women in white costumes. And one cis white man gets to like, sleep with all of them. Fair. Got it. There we are. We figured it out. America.

[25:36] Mo Brady: So let's get to our Yelp review. Time for the Yelp review. Which performance made the show look better than it was?

[25:42] Aaron Albano: Lori Beachman. Just Lori. Lori Beachman, much like the Patti LuPone performance. Sure. Lori Beachman, the Lori Beachman performance made Joseph look better than it was. Those pipes don't quit. What about you?

[25:55] Mo Brady: I mean, this was like an Imperial medley that also had some awards in it. And for me. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. What performance made the show look better than it was? Probably Leslie Uggams coming out and singing like 16 bars of every time she came out and sang 16 bars. Because every time she came out, I was like, I want to see that show.

[26:14] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Which performance made you want to buy a ticket? Where would you spend 140 of your hard-earned dollars or probably more like 25 at this time?

[26:20] Mo Brady: Lori Beachman, the musical. Like, again, you're just going to see Lori Beachman at 54 Below. I will see Lori Beachman at the Lori Beachman Theater, hosted by Ben Cameron.

[26:36] Aaron Albano: How about you?

[26:39] Mo Brady: Okay, sure. I'll come with you. But I also will spend my hard-earned money to see Dreamgirls. Truthfully, that's my real answer. But yes. What speech moved you the most, Mo?

[26:45] Mo Brady: You know, for as much dogging as I'm doing on Tommy Tune, like I did like his speech for Best Director. He was short, sweet, gracious. He starts with a little tap dance. He ends with a gesture to the audience where he's like, thank all of you. And you're like, I honestly believe that he thanks all of the people in this room right now. You?

[27:07] Aaron Albano: I loved all the Dreamgirls speeches. It started with Michael Bennett and Michael Peters. Michael Peters leaped onto the stage. And this is Michael Peters. This is this is Michael Jackson's choreographer that just won a Tony.

[27:15] Mo Brady: I didn't realize that.

[27:16] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Michael Peters is like, in the "Beat It" video. He's the guy in white. Like forget about it. And then Ben Harney's is beautiful. Cleavon Derrick's is beautiful. Jennifer Holliday's is like the most sincere and most genuine I've ever seen. All they're just all so grateful. It's beautiful. And there's something really rewarding as a viewer of the Tony Awards to see a great performance and then someone win for that great for that performance.

[27:49] Mo Brady: Yeah, like when it lines up, it really lines up like when James Monroe Iglehart does "Friend Like Me." You know why he won his Tony, right? Same thing with Jennifer Holliday, which is, yeah, biggest surprise when I would have told you that Raul Julia won for Nine if you told me who won Best Actor in 1982 before I watched this. So to see that he didn't win. And that Ben Harney won for Dreamgirls. I was like, oh, cool. Well, there's some revisionist history I made up my mind.

[28:18] Aaron Albano: See, and I think I think I said the same. I knew that Ben Harney won. But I'm realizing that this is a trend in these recaps where I'm like, shocked by the solidness of some of these categories, where I'm just like, in a category of Raul Julia, Victor Garber, and Herschel Bernardi, who played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, the fact that he played Tevye means he's got some game. Spoiler alert, Tevye is a big role. Yeah. And so like, in a category with all three of those heavy hitters, it wasn't a surprise because I knew Ben Harney won, but it was still a surprise amidst that group.

[29:01] Mo Brady: Would you recommend watching the 1982 Tony Awards, Aaron Albano?

[29:11] Aaron Albano: No. Only because like, literally every time we came back from a commercial, and Tony Randall was sitting on that chair to tell us more about the Imperial cerebrally, knowing what was happening. I'm living, watching, and viscerally, I'm like, goddammit, can this be done already? Sure. In a world where this is up against Great British Bake Off, I would not watch this. In a world where this is like something you watch in a musical theater class that you're taking remotely at like Harvard University, because you can take remote classes at Harvard during a pandemic, 100%. I would say I'd watch it for the Dreamgirls performance alone. But I could also just watch the Dreamgirls performance alone with or without a drink.

[30:01] Mo Brady: So at the end of each episode, Aaron and I randomly select another Tony telecast to watch. We have the following week like you do to research the season as a whole. And then we bring our most surprising findings.

[30:11] Aaron Albano: Well, we'll research the season. You'll just watch it and then listen to us.

[30:15] Mo Brady: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you guys could. You can research all you want. Send us your findings. So let's select our seventh Tony telecast. I have put a handful of infamous Tony seasons on pieces of paper in this basket. And I will now randomly select one to explore for next week's episode.

[30:33] Aaron Albano: Wow, there's not many left. Our next Tony telecast we are watching is from 2004.

[30:40] Mo Brady: 2004.

[30:46] Aaron Albano: The infamous Wicked vs. Avenue Q.

[30:55] Mo Brady: That's what we're watching next. It's happening. Here we go. Hugh Jackman's first, I think.

[31:01] Aaron Albano: Man, you know a lot about this. This was my first season on Broadway. Of course I know a lot about this year in my non-nominated musical. Can't wait to choose it next week.

[31:10] Mo Brady: To join us for our next Tony's recap, be sure to do your homework with us on the 2004 Tony Awards. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Aaron Albano, and me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping the Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash the Ensemblist. Please follow the Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network. You can also follow us on Instagram. Thanks for listening, everybody. Until next time.