Mary Martin
Birth : 1913-12-01, Weatherford, Texas, USA
Death : 1990-11-03
History
Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress, singer, and Broadway star. A muse of Rodgers and Hammerstein, she originated many leading roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was the mother of actor Larry Hagman.
Martin began her radio career in 1939 as the vocalist on a short-lived revival of The Tuesday Night Party on CBS. In 1940, she was a singer on NBC's Good News of 1940, which was renamed Maxwell House Coffee Time during that year. In 1942, she joined the cast of Kraft Music Hall on NBC, replacing Connie Boswell. She was also one of the stars of Stage Door Canteen on CBS, 1942–1945. Martin was cast in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me!, making her Broadway debut in November 1938 in that production. She became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". With that one song in the second act, she became a star 'overnight'. Martin reprised the song in Night and Day, a Hollywood film about Cole Porter, in which she played herself auditioning for Porter. As nurse Nellie Forbush, Martin opened on Broadway in South Pacific. Her next major success was in the role of Peter in the Broadway production of Peter Pan. Martin opened on Broadway in The Sound of Music, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Although she appeared in nine films between 1938 and 1943, she was generally passed over for the filmed version of the musical plays. She herself once explained that she did not enjoy making films because she did not have the connection with an audience that she had in live performances. The closest that she ever came to preserving her stage performances was her television appearances as Peter Pan. The Broadway production from 1954 was subsequently performed on NBC television in RCA's compatible color in 1955, 1956, and 1960. Martin also preserved her 1957 stage performance as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun when NBC television broadcast the production live that year.
While Martin did not enjoy making films, she apparently did enjoy appearing on television as she did frequently. Her last feature film appearance was a cameo as herself in MGM's Main Street to Broadway in 1953. Martin made an appearance in 1980 in a Royal Variety Performance in London performing "Honeybun" from South Pacific. Martin appeared in the play Legends with Carol Channing in a one-year US national tour opening in Dallas on January 9, 1986. Martin was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1973. She received the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual honor for career achievements, in 1989. She received the Donaldson Award in 1943 for One Touch of Venus. A special Tony was presented to her in 1948 while she appeared in the national touring company of Annie Get Your Gun for "spreading theatre to the rest of the country while the originals perform in New York." In 1955 and 1956, she received, first, a Tony Award for Peter Pan, and then an Emmy for appearing in the same role on television. She also received Tonys for South Pacific and in 1959 for The Sound of Music.
Self (archive footage)
Bing Crosby was, without a doubt, the most popular and influential multi-media star of the first half of the twentieth century, pulling audiences in with his intimate, laid-back voice and innate charm. Narrated by Stanley Tucci and directed by Robert Trachtenberg, this film explores the life and legend of this iconic performer, revealing a personality far more complex than the image the public had only thought they'd known.
Self
Bing Crosby and Christmas - they're inseparable. It was only natural for the voice that sold more than 100 million copies of 'White Christmas' to eventually celebrate the season on television. This second volume of Crosby television specials showcases those Christmas shows. Included in this premiere, two-disc collection are Bing's first holiday special, produced in England in 1961, his first color special from 1962 with Mary Martin, Bing Crosby and the Sounds of Christmas with Robert Goulet and Mary Costa from 1971, and Bing s final special, Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, which includes the iconic duet of 'The Little Drummer Boy / Peace on Earth' with David Bowie. These treasured programs have been meticulously restored from the original film and videotape sources, and are presented with all the original performances intact.
Herself
The program on this DVD is basically a retrospective produced in the early 1990s for public television that was originally called «A Bing Crosby Christmas: Just Like the Ones You Used to Know» that was narrated by Gene Kelly and hosted by Bing's widow, Kathryn Crosby. The program itself features clips from fifteen of Bing's classic television specials, concentrating on the period from the early 1960s onwards when he included Kathryn and their three children in the programs.
Archive Footage
Biographical portrait of one of Broadway's most brilliant songwriters. Told through the use of archival material and interviews with the rich and famous that knew him, this portrait concentrates on his career and his public life events.
Self
The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers payed up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and costume changes, tape rewinding, and the like. Executive producer Alexander Cohen estimated that the 5,800 Radio City Music Hall seats sold out at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. The show itself cost about $4 million to produce and was expected to yield around $2 million for the new addition to the Actors Fund retirement home in Englewood, N. J. ABC is reputed to have paid more than $5 million for the television rights.
Gracie Schwartz
A feisty widow falls in love with a zestful widower in a retirement community, much to the disapproval of her married daughter.
Herself
Bing celebrated the holidays by starring in his first color special, which aired on Christmas Eve. This time the show concluded with an extended holiday-themed segment featuring Bing and his guests, Mary Martin , Andre Previn and The United Nations Children’s Choir . Bing delivers a standout version of “ The Little Drummer Boy ” and performs “ White Christmas ” with Mary Martin. The other musical selections are dominated by two extended Crosby-Martin medleys, but there’s also a fine solo by Bing on “ I Left My Heart in San Francisco ” and the positively surreal production number, “ Doin’ the Bing ”. (A dance craze was not started.) This would be the last Crosby holiday show not devoted entirely to the Christmas theme.
Peter Pan
In this magical tale about the boy who refuses to grow up, Peter Pan and his mischievous fairy sidekick Tinkerbell visit the nursery of Wendy, Michael and John Darling. With a sprinkling of pixie dust, Peter and his new friends fly out the nursery window and over London to Never-Never Land. The children experience many wonderful and exciting adventures with the Lost Boys, Tiger Lily's Indian tribe, and Peter's arch enemy the dastardly pirate Captain Hook.
Executive Producer
A live television adaptation of the popular musical about sharpshooter Annie Oakley joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and falling in love with her co-star, Frank Butler.
Annie Oakley
A live television adaptation of the popular musical about sharpshooter Annie Oakley joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and falling in love with her co-star, Frank Butler.
Peter Pan
This SECOND live broadcast aired a year after the success of the first. Utilizing much of the same cast, it nevertheless is its own unique performance which charmed millions of households in 1956.
Peter Pan
This musical version of the tale of the boy who wouldn't grow up aired live on television on March 7, 1955. It was so popular that it was restaged the following year, and again four years later.
Self
In New York, a surly, down-on-his-heels playwright meets a country girl who's giving up trying to act and returning home. He goes with her for inspiration when his agent convinces a stage star to take his next effort. When he returns to Broadway, his girl stays behind and starts seeing a local businessman.
Herself
The program was the first so-called "Television Spectacular". Ford presented the show without commercial interruption. It is believed to be the first time that Edward R. Murrow appeared on NBC in a professional capacity. Also, in 1953, it was necessary for Ford to buy time on two networks to ensure maximum coverage of US TV households - at the time, neither CBS nor NBC reached 100% of them. The famed 1953 television special celebrating the Ford Motor Company's 50th anniversary brought together two of the greatest leading ladies Broadway has ever known. The highlight of the program is Merman and Martin’s 13-minute duet medley, where they sing the songs that made them famous, plus much more. On their own, Merman sings “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “Mademoiselle from Armetières” and Martin performs a brilliantly comic routine about changes in fashion over the first half of the 20th century.
Mary Martin
Swellegant and elegant. Delux and delovely. Cole Porter was the most sophisticated name in 20th-century songwriting. And to play him on screen, Hollywood chose debonair icon Cary Grant. Grant stars for the first time in color in this fanciful biopic. Alexis Smith plays Linda, whose serendipitous meetings with Porter lead to a meeting at the alter. More than 20 of his songs grace this tail of triumph and tragedy, with Grant lending is amiable voice to "You're the Top", "Night and Day" and more. Monty Woolley, a Yale contemporary of Porter, portrays himself. And Jane Wyman, Mary Martin, Eve Arden and others provide vocals and verve. Lights down. Curtain up. Showtune standards embraced by generations are yours to enjoy in "Night and Day."
Bonnie Porter
A writer for a radio program needs some fresh ideas to juice up his show. For inspiration, he rents a room with a typical American family and begins to secretly write about their true life antics. The show becomes a big hit, but he begins to feel guilty about his charade when he falls in love with the family's pretty older daughter.
Marjory Stuart
A gold-digger hopes to land a rich husband in Trinidad, but gets mixed up with a beach boy and voodoo.
Mary Martin
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddies, Pop enlists the aid of the studio's dizzy switchboard operator in pulling off the charade. Things get more complicated when Pop agrees to put together a show for the Navy starring Paramount's top contract players.
Betty Lou Cobb
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.
Alexandra Curtis
Victor Ballard, a happy-go-lucky albeit impoverished sidewalk photographer, shares a New York City studio apartment with Polish immigrant painter Stefan Janowski. The big city doles out joy and misery indiscriminately: In the apartment below Victor and Steve, Gus Nelson learns that his wife has given birth to quintuplets, while the lonely tenant in the apartment below Gus has given up on life and committed suicide.
Cindy Lou Bethany
New York chorus girl Cindy Lou Bethany becomes frustrated when she prepares for an audition for a Broadway musical, but the auditions close and her roommate, Gwen Abbott, is hired to be secretary to Top Rumson, the show's financial backer. Gwen tells Cindy that the director, Lloyd Lloyd, and composer, Dick Rayburn, have been sent to the South on a talent search for a classic Southern belle type to star in the show, although their shows usually feature Myra Stanhope, an actress whose style is hopelessly inappropriate for this show. Desperate for work, Cindy returns to her aunt Lily Lou and uncle Jefferson Davis Bethany's home in the South and schemes to get Lloyd and Rayburn to audition her.
Mary Allen
Capitalizing on the famous radio 'feud' between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen. The two stars play versions of themselves, constantly at each other's throats due to real and imagined slights.
Cherry Lane
Popular songwriter Oliver Courtney has been getting by for years using one ghost writer for his music and another for his lyrics. When both writers meet at an inn, they fall in love and then try to sell their songs under their own name. The problem is every song publisher thinks they're copying Courtney's style.
Combines airplane trips and fashion. Heavy on the fashion.
Louise Hall
In his last film assignment, portly Walter Connolly fills the title role (in more ways than one) in The Great Victor Herbert. Very little of Herbert's life story is incorporated in the screenplay (a closing title actually apologizes for the film's paucity of cold hard facts); instead, the writers allow the famed composer's works to speak for themselves. In the tradition of one of his own operettas, Herbert spends most of his time patching up the shaky marriage between tenor John Ramsey (Allan Jones) and Louise Hall (Mary Martin). Many of Herbert's most famous compositions are well in evidence, including "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", "March of the Toys" and "Kiss Me Again", the latter performed con brio by teenaged coloratura Susanna Foster. Evidently, the producers were able to secure the film rights for the Herbert songs, but not for the stage productions in which they appeared, which may explain such bizarre interpolations as having a song from Naughty Marietta.
