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[0:01] Moe Brady: This is Control!

[0:04] Aaron Albano: You're listening to Tony Telecasts from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out.

[0:11] Moe Brady: I'm Moe Brady.

[0:12] Aaron Albano: And I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:20] Moe Brady: Welcome back, baby, to our mini-series about the Tony Awards, bringing you all the drama behind the drama of a theatre season in Broadway history.

[0:29] Aaron Albano: In each podcast episode, we watch a telecast of a previous Tony Awards, not only the performances, but the opening and speeches to see how it reflects the season as a whole.

[0:38] Moe Brady: So let's dive in and talk about the 1987 Tony Awards.

[0:42] Aaron Albano: The 41st Annual Tony Awards were held June 6th, 1987 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, with Angela Lansbury hosting for her third time.

[0:52] Moe Brady: Heading into the ceremony, Me and My Girl and Les Miserables were neck and neck, leading the pack for the most nominations, with 13 and 12 respectively.

[1:01] Aaron Albano: Behind them were Starlight Express, with 7 nominations, and Rags, with 5.

[1:06] Moe Brady: Although the category was titled Best Revival in a Play or a Musical, this season there were no musicals nominated for that award.

[1:13] Aaron Albano: I noticed that too.

[1:14] Moe Brady: So aside from the telecast itself, what was happening at the time, Aaron?

[1:18] Aaron Albano: The 1986-87 season was smack dab in the middle of a volatile time, but not particularly bombastic itself.

[1:25] Moe Brady: We found ourselves in the middle of President Ronald Reagan's second term, with the Cold War, the War on Drugs, and the AIDS epidemic raging.

[1:33] Aaron Albano: Interestingly enough, a week after this telecast is when Reagan makes his famous speech in Berlin where he asks Gorbachev to tear down this wall.

[1:42] Moe Brady: Also, this season occurred during the end of the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal that embroiled the country for about a year and a half, where the Reagan administration was found to be bartering arms for 7 US hostages in the Middle East.

[1:54] Aaron Albano: Gotta love a quid pro quo.

[1:56] Moe Brady: On Broadway, the British Invasion was here.

[2:00] Aaron Albano: With 3 out of 4 of the best musical nominees being British imports, Cats Alive and Well at the Winter Garden, and Phantom opening in the West End and waiting in the wings for their Broadway house, it seemed like Cameron Mackintosh, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and all their contemporaries were taking over the Great White Way.

[2:26] Moe Brady: All right, let's, it's so good to be back!

[2:29] Aaron Albano: We're back!

[2:30] Moe Brady: Watching the 1987 Tonys, it reminded me how much work it is to, like, watch and research a season and highlight the Tony Awards, but also how fun it is. Like, it's just, like, I feel like we, like, really get in there with this miniseries.

[2:43] Aaron Albano: Well, and it also, like, after such, like, heavy, heavy depth from the Fosse-Verdon series, it was nice to just watch some Tonys again.

[2:51] Moe Brady: Sure. There's obviously a lot to each Tony season, especially the way that we're sort of, like, dissecting each telecast.

[2:59] Aaron Albano: But Fosse-Verdon was a lot denser.

[3:02] Moe Brady: Oh, 100%!

[3:05] Aaron Albano: So, as we are want to do, let's pour one out for the non-nominated musicals. There were six this season.

[3:12] Moe Brady: Okay.

[3:13] Aaron Albano: So we had Raggedy Ann, which was a children's musical based on the book, 15 previews and five performances at the Nederlander, Into the Light, 16 previews and three performances at the Neil Simon, Smile, which had 11 previews and 48 performances at the Lunt-Fontanne.

[3:30] Moe Brady: This is a sort of famous Marvin Hamlisch musical that had Jodie Benson from The Little Mermaid in the leading role.

[3:37] Aaron Albano: This is the, like, beauty queen one that Howard Ashman and Marvin Hamlisch did.

[3:41] Moe Brady: Yes.

[3:42] Aaron Albano: They talk about it in the Howard documentary.

[3:44] Moe Brady: Yes, exactly.

[3:45] Aaron Albano: Got it. Okay.

[3:46] Moe Brady: So those three, in terms of new musicals per se, Oak Howard and Stardust were two reviews.

[3:55] Aaron Albano: Both had 16 previews. Oak Howard had 56 performances at the Helen Hayes. Stardust had 101 at the Biltmore.

[4:02] Moe Brady: Stardust featured both Jim Walton and Andre De Shields in the cast.

[4:06] Aaron Albano: Fierce! All right.

[4:07] Moe Brady: And then the sixth was staging a revival of The Mikado, which had three previews and 37 performances at the Virginia.

[4:15] Aaron Albano: A couple of things I think are interesting.

[4:17] Moe Brady: One is that certainly The Mikado could have been a revival.

[4:21] Aaron Albano: I mean, I guess it's not really a musical per se.

[4:23] Moe Brady: Because it's an opera, right? It's a Virginia opera?

[4:26] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[4:27] Moe Brady: Okay.

[4:28] Aaron Albano: But wasn't nominated.

[4:29] Moe Brady: Yeah.

[4:30] Aaron Albano: Even though there were nominations for the show.

[4:31] Moe Brady: That's, yes, yes, yes.

[4:33] Aaron Albano: And then I think the Rags nomination is fascinating.

[4:37] Moe Brady: Because Rags only ran for 18 previews and four performances.

[4:41] Aaron Albano: Wow.

[4:42] Moe Brady: So it's right up there with these other quick hits of Raggedy Ann and Into the Light.

[4:46] Aaron Albano: Uh-huh.

[4:47] Moe Brady: You know, Smile ran—

[4:48] Aaron Albano: Longer, essentially.

[4:49] Moe Brady: Twelve times longer.

[4:51] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[4:52] Moe Brady: At the Lunt-Fontanne.

[4:53] Aaron Albano: So it's very interesting to me that Rags sort of gets celebrated in this way, gets to be on the telecast.

[5:00] Moe Brady: And yet Smile gets—

[5:02] Aaron Albano: Nothing.

[5:03] Moe Brady: Boo.

[5:04] Aaron Albano: Smile is not nominated for anything.

[5:05] Moe Brady: Uh-huh.

[5:06] Aaron Albano: And were any of these still running at the time of the telecast?

[5:09] Moe Brady: Or had they all closed by then?

[5:10] Aaron Albano: None of these six were running at this time.

[5:12] Moe Brady: The Mikado and Stardust both closed in May.

[5:15] Aaron Albano: But Smile had closed all the way back in January.

[5:18] Moe Brady: Do you know Rags?

[5:19] Aaron Albano: I don't know Rags at all.

[5:21] Moe Brady: I basically know this performance of Rags from watching it on YouTube.

[5:25] Aaron Albano: Which is a strong performance.

[5:26] Moe Brady: And I almost—

[5:27] Aaron Albano: It almost makes me wonder, like, is it the one time when, like, the art of a show, like, carried it into the Tonys?

[5:33] Moe Brady: Because, like, you have Smile, which is Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman. So it's not like Stephen Schwartz's name had the clout above Marvin Hamlisch to get it nominated over the other.

[5:44] Aaron Albano: But if people loved this show, it just didn't sell a whole lot of tickets.

[5:49] Moe Brady: This is the same amount of performances as Carrie.

[5:52] Aaron Albano: How do you—

[5:53] Moe Brady: How do people even have time to celebrate a show like that?

[5:55] Aaron Albano: But again, if it's one of those shows where, like, it was very loved by a community that just didn't have money to go and see it more?

[6:03] Moe Brady: Like, I don't know.

[6:05] Aaron Albano: You're right.

[6:06] Moe Brady: It feels weird compared to how we sort of view closed shows now.

[6:12] Aaron Albano: And this is less than two years before the Mark Hellinger has its last Broadway show in it, which was Legs Diamond, which closed in February of 1989.

[6:21] Moe Brady: So maybe it's also just the theater.

[6:23] Aaron Albano: Maybe.

[6:24] Moe Brady: After that, they welcomed Jesus.

[6:26] Aaron Albano: It is now the Times Square Church, everyone.

[6:28] Moe Brady: Whenever you see those listicles of, like, the spaces that used to be a Broadway theater, the Mark Hellinger Theater always, I think, is, like, number one on that list.

[6:37] Aaron Albano: Because it is—it's still in operation.

[6:39] Moe Brady: It still greets crowds of hundreds every week.

[6:42] Aaron Albano: It still has a marquee for their Christmas show every year.

[6:46] Moe Brady: And other than the, like, multi-decade lease that the church has on the building, it is—it also feels like it's the building that is most ripe just to return to Broadway as well.

[6:57] Aaron Albano: Oh, fair. That's true. That's true.

[6:59] Moe Brady: Let's talk about this telecast.

[7:16] Aaron Albano: Okay!

[7:17] Moe Brady: This opening number, which was like a mockery of itself and yet somehow worked and yet somehow didn't for me.

[7:24] Aaron Albano: Well, can I tell you my favorite thing about this, in that vein of you describing it that way?

[7:29] Moe Brady: I thought it was very cute.

[7:31] Aaron Albano: It had severe, like, opening to Easter bonnet, opening to Red Bucket Follies vibes.

[7:37] Moe Brady: It did have, like, a Broadway Cares benefit move to it.

[7:40] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[7:41] Moe Brady: Yes, for sure.

[7:42] Aaron Albano: So what this is is Bill Irwin comes out, and he introduces—it's like a textbook report about the elements of an opening number.

[7:52] Moe Brady: He talks about the different design elements, and then a chorus comes out.

[7:56] Aaron Albano: And he's sort of, like, guiding through how to make an opening number without ever actually doing what we would think of as an opening number.

[8:04] Moe Brady: It's very Man in Chair from Josie Shapiro.

[8:06] Aaron Albano: Oh, sure. Yes.

[8:07] Moe Brady: And it does introduce Angela Lansbury, our host, very well.

[8:12] Aaron Albano: She comes down a ground staircase to applause.

[8:15] Moe Brady: I thought the buildup to that was great and funny.

[8:18] Aaron Albano: But it is funny that it is kind of not a great opening.

[8:23] Moe Brady: I mean, there's, like, no—there's no meat to it, you know?

[8:26] Aaron Albano: No.

[8:27] Moe Brady: Like, I enjoyed it, but there wasn't anything to grab onto.

[8:29] Aaron Albano: I mean, one thing, it was really short, which was great.

[8:31] Moe Brady: And we just got straight into the telecast.

[8:34] Aaron Albano: But I was just like, this is a fascinating concept that I feel like would never happen today.

[8:40] Moe Brady: The difference between these sort of 1970s and 1980s telecasts is that they were much more about the theater, right?

[8:48] Aaron Albano: Yes. Yeah.

[8:49] Moe Brady: And now it's much more about Broadway.

[8:52] Aaron Albano: All of it feels very, like, here's a window into our industry.

[8:57] Moe Brady: And now it's more about, like, the commercialization of our industry.

[9:01] Aaron Albano: As you said, this is the British Invasion.

[9:04] Moe Brady: It is here in full force.

[9:06] Aaron Albano: One thing that I kept thinking about was how we watched the next Tony Awards, right?

[9:11] Moe Brady: The next Tony Awards was Into the Woods vs. Phantom.

[9:14] Aaron Albano: And that was really pitched as British musical theater versus American musical theater.

[9:19] Moe Brady: And I feel like in the 1987 Tony Awards, we're getting primed for that.

[9:24] Aaron Albano: Sure.

[9:25] Moe Brady: Because we're seeing all of these British artists.

[9:28] Aaron Albano: Like, if 1988 was, like, America's, like, fight back, this was the one where the U.S. was like, wait, hold on. What are you all doing here?

[9:34] Moe Brady: But what was interesting is that, like, from, I forget what year it was, but when Trevor Nunn gives that speech, I think it's when he won for Nicholas Nickleby, where he's like, thank you for welcoming us. Thank you for opening your gates to us. And I hope there's more collaboration between the U.S. and Britain or whatever.

[9:58] Aaron Albano: Oh, yeah.

[9:59] Moe Brady: I feel like that sentiment existed for the most part, except when John Napier won his awards.

[10:06] Aaron Albano: John Napier, the famed scenic and costume designer who did a lot of these British mega musicals.

[10:13] Moe Brady: Yeah.

[10:14] Aaron Albano: He wins twice this year.

[10:16] Moe Brady: I think he wins for costume for Starlight, and then he wins for set for Les Mis.

[10:22] Aaron Albano: He comes up twice and is a dick both times.

[10:26] Moe Brady: He's a monster.

[10:27] Aaron Albano: It's the grossest thing I've ever seen.

[10:29] Moe Brady: The first time he finishes his very short speech, which is for costumes, and he's like, well, there's one, and walks off.

[10:36] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[10:37] Moe Brady: And then leaves.

[10:38] Aaron Albano: But then we get back to scenic, and he wins for Les Mis.

[10:42] Moe Brady: First off, he starts his speech with, which one is this?

[10:45] Aaron Albano: Which I'm like, ew.

[10:47] Moe Brady: Ew.

[11:20] Moe Brady: Someone else who maybe deserves a lot of acclaim also and then you look up the facts.

[11:25] Aaron Albano: He's saying I should have been nominated twice.

[11:28] Moe Brady: Correct, and he's like mad about it. It was like it is a big you like fuck off.

[11:34] Aaron Albano: John Napier like get out of here. We don't need you or want you give me that statue back.

[11:40] Moe Brady: Cuz I'm very sure the scenic designer for Me and My Girl would have been happy to take that award home.

[11:45] Aaron Albano: Luckily, it was like a unique energy that didn't stay John Napier caused the British Invasion backlash by.

[11:54] Moe Brady: Yes, literally by himself.

[11:56] Aaron Albano: Everybody was like pissed and Sondheim was like, I'm gonna write Into the Woods just to spite you.

[12:01] Moe Brady: Let's talk about more gracious awards.

[12:03] Aaron Albano: Yeah, when Verdon and Bob Fosse present the Tony Awards for Best Direction of a Musical and Choreography together.

[12:10] Moe Brady: Funny to see them come out like after we've experienced Fosse/Verdon you and I I was like, is that really them?

[12:17] Aaron Albano: It was so wonderful and Trevor Nunn is super classy when he gets his award for Best Direction of the Musical.

[12:24] Moe Brady: And he says just to be on the stage with these two is a gift. Yes, just opposite of John Napier.

[12:30] Aaron Albano: Just the most gracious most kind.

[12:33] Moe Brady: Not full of himself at all.

[12:34] Aaron Albano: One other thing he says is it won't be long before this partnership will become a household name who Beale and Schoenberg.

[12:41] Moe Brady: Yeah, and I was like, well, there you go. You were right. Not wrong. Not wrong at all.

[12:46] Aaron Albano: Is it his whole speech was really I called it the partnership speech.

[12:50] Moe Brady: It was very cool to hear him like call out all of these partnerships.

[12:54] Aaron Albano: The one thing that I did want to ask you about though is his final point. He's imploring this partnership between artists and critics where he's like there should be more of a partnership instead of this animosity between them.

[13:08] Moe Brady: I think it was a commercial break right after and I literally was like do I agree with that? Do you agree with that?

[13:12] Aaron Albano: No, I can't decide I'm more interested in the fact that critics have so much sway over people at the Tony Awards.

[13:21] Moe Brady: Right.

[13:21] Aaron Albano: Like we know that the influence of critics has gone down in the age of the internet and to the age of social media on top of that.

[13:30] Moe Brady: But we used to have dedicate Tony Awards to the influence of critics.

[13:34] Aaron Albano: Like we used to stage entire ceremonies about them and people used to mention them in their speeches.

[13:39] Moe Brady: And you just can't imagine that anymore.

[13:44] Aaron Albano: No, the same way, you know, yeah.

[13:44] Moe Brady: I mean, and it's definitely we used to name theaters after them.

[13:50] Aaron Albano: Oh, that's super real fair. That's true.

[13:50] Moe Brady: I mean, but it's like it was just interesting because it was this very earnest plea of like can't we all just get along and I would just like when you do have an honest critique of a show that's maybe not necessarily so laden with digs and jibes that's when we can attribute the most credibility to them is because they're independent right and whereas if there was like this super duper partnership often when we see a love letter in terms of a review today we think oh that's impartial. I don't necessarily trust it.

[14:26] Aaron Albano: Correct? Because yeah, I want to have that kind of perspective.

[14:42] Moe Brady: Let's talk about how we did plays this on the spectrum of not a lot of plays to a lot of plays on screen was a lot of plays.

[14:50] Aaron Albano: The scenes are back. We got scenes again, which was great. So this one we got Angela Lansbury announcing and sort of summarizing the first two which were Broadway Bound and Fences and then they performed their scenes and then later in the telecast Mary Tyler Moore comes out and describes the second two which was Coastal Disturbances and Lele's on Deja Vu.

[15:13] Moe Brady: Again, I love the scenes. I'm mad we don't do this as much because every time it's two for two for me.

[15:20] Aaron Albano: I can understand how they are like bathroom breaks in a lot of ways but it doesn't really help you understand what the play is like what the vibe of the place?

[15:29] Moe Brady: I couldn't have told you a thing about Coastal Disturbances if I hadn't have seen Annette Bening and Tim Daly in a sandbox in Tim Daly's running around in a very well-fitting pair of jeans cover up and Annette Bening in sand with as she delivers a monologue about Indians on the beach and Braves surfing on totem poles.

[15:53] Aaron Albano: I was like, this is why I've never heard of this place because we are not doing this anymore.

[15:58] Moe Brady: This is not happening, but I love this Fences scene.

[16:03] Aaron Albano: I mean, it's like an iconic Fences scene and I remember I think there's like a comparison video online of this clip and then like Denzel Washington doing it in the movie and it shows just how strong how different their takes are but how strong the writing is no matter what but it's a great scene. You got two legends on stage Courtney B. Vance and James Earl Jones, correct, and it's so good. I love the plays. I love plays.

[16:29] Moe Brady: I love the plays and we got to see Snape doing some of the laser. There's a room with Lindsay Duncan.

[16:34] Aaron Albano: Yeah, good good good people in the play clips to for sure.

[16:39] Moe Brady: Yeah, we get not only one lifetime tribute in the 1987 Tony Awards but we get two.

[16:45] Aaron Albano: We get two we get one for we get the hundredth birthday of George Abbott, which feels like a strange afterthought.

[16:54] Moe Brady: It's actually the last thing. It's the finale of the show, right? And then earlier we get a memorial to Robert Preston.

[17:02] Aaron Albano: Mm-hmm.

[17:03] Moe Brady: I guess the Robert Preston was more of what I expect in terms of a tribute having young the Imperial Medley and so many other things we see, you know, great Broadway stars singing music of the past things. We don't see anymore on the Tony Awards Bernadette Peters sings "Time Heals Everything" from Mack and Mabel Barbara Cook sings "Till There Was You" from The Music Man.

[17:24] Aaron Albano: There's a performance of "76 Trombones" with a full children's band coming in from the audience with literally 76 trombones there were so many people on stage. It was nuts and then after they do "76 Trombones" with literally 76 trombones Mary Martin comes out tells a story of working with Robert on the film New York Town and sings "This House" from I Do! I Do! like it's not a very particularly well-structured piece, but it is like a massive memorial. It's a huge tribute. Did you enjoy it?

[17:55] Moe Brady: I think I did. I mean, it was great. I mean, I enjoyed both of them. It was yet another feeling of like this doesn't really feel like how we do this now this felt like we don't celebrate one person.

[18:11] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[18:12] Moe Brady: Cindy Lauper sings "Time After Time" and we see a bunch of photos up on or we'll call out frankly the most famous person and then we'll list all the other artists we've lost that year. Whereas this one was a memorial one was a birthday celebration but they were both tributes and they both ended with like and here's a Tony for your stuff.

[18:34] Aaron Albano: This feels very Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS benefit.

[18:38] Moe Brady: In those things is when we truck out like the oldest living like Follies girl or like where we tribute the work of a legend in our field we just don't have a Tony to give her.

[18:50] Aaron Albano: Hilarious because you know like this is basically the time in which Broadway Cares started. So what you're saying is that every Broadway Cares event feels like a Tony Awards from 30 years ago, which is like not entirely under.

[19:00] Moe Brady: Oops.

[19:10] Aaron Albano: Cool, I mean, which I mean and again, it's still great TV and still a beautiful celebration it's just not a style of what we do now what we do now and it's so interesting to see again the show was old like the way you and I know the show is that Best Play Best Musical happen and we're done and yet no, we're not because we ended with a birthday party that makes it feel super insidery.

[19:36] Moe Brady: Yeah.

[19:36] Aaron Albano: Because also like that's that you don't do an award show without the biggest award at the end they all do the big award at the end or else you would turn off the TV after the big award. It's wild.

[19:47] Moe Brady: It's I mean, it's great, but it's wild something that felt a lot more like what we do now in my opinion is when host Angela Lansbury trots out Bea Arthur for no apparent reason and they perform "Bosom Buddies" from Mame, right they do it with the choreography. This is 21 years after the show originally played on Broadway opened on Broadway. So there's no reason to do it and yet it is quite charming. I would say it's adorable.

[20:17] Aaron Albano: I feel like we should start like a list of clips where we just call the entire list like cute but why you know, here's why why in my opinion?

[20:25] Moe Brady: Okay, if we didn't have them performing "Bosom Buddies" on the 1987 Tony Awards we would not have a television clip of Bea Arthur and Angela Lansbury's singing "Bosom Buddies" or at least in this high quality that you could do 21 years later after they had opened the show.

[20:45] Aaron Albano: Okay, I'm a little bit here for Robert Morse singing "I Believe in You" from How to Succeed and these sure going like these moments.

[20:54] Moe Brady: I'm happy with a couple of little drop-ins like let's give these people that are icons in our industry. Let's like see how they did it if it's like a special guest thing. I don't know to me this makes more sense than a Robert Preston Memorial or even a George Abbott birthday party later.

[21:14] Aaron Albano: Okay, like if we're going to establish the legacy of our industry this early on like.

[21:22] Moe Brady: Yeah, because 21 years ago this Tony's weren't on TV yet.

[21:29] Aaron Albano: Mm-hmm.

[21:29] Moe Brady: Okay fair for fair for fair for fair for fair. Okay, I concede.

[21:37] Aaron Albano: That's the end of our first part of our 1987 Tony telecast this time around we asked on Instagram which Tony ceremonies you our listeners wanted to review and discuss and so we thank Linda for this great suggestion of looking back on the 1987 telecast to join us for part two of our recap about 1987 come meet us on Friday.

[21:59] Moe Brady: The Ensemblist was produced today by me Aaron Albano and me Moe Brady. Special thanks to Was of Sammy for the background research on this week's Tony season.

[22:08] Aaron Albano: Please rate and review The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or at BPM.FM the home of Broadway Podcast Network. Our Patreon members have on-demand access to our full archive including full conversations with our guests and early access to episodes.

[22:24] Moe Brady: You can support us for between $5 and $20 a month at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Thanks for listening until next time.