"This award forever shatters the myth about musical theatre."

[quote]Has there ever been a bitchier awards acceptance speech?

Why do you ask?

I don't follow the Tony awards. I'll ask Glenn.

What about my rejection speech, does that count?

My Tony acceptance speech remains a head scratcher.

Rita Moreno's acceptance speech for The Ritz was supremely bitchy.

Any specifics, R5?

Eve Harrington, the Sarah Siddons Award?

I've seen that R5. She's mad at getting a featured rather than a lead award. She proclaims herself the star of The Ritz.

Why'd she get put in the lower category if that was so? I looked up the poster and she is billed above the title.

I enjoyed La Cage but "Sunday" from SITPWG is one of my favorite songs. One of the few that send shivers all over me and makes me get all emotional.

I know - 10 "Hail, MARY!!!" s

But if you're not familiar with it, give it a listen.

[R9] I love that scene, too. To see a famous painting composed before your eyes like that is thrilling. And to put personalities to the characters is genius. Thanks for posting it.

Both my Tony acceptance speeches were intentionally opaque.

This is only my second!!!!! Can you believe I don't have more!!!!

The only song I know from SITPWG is "finishing the hat." Still, that's one more than I know from LaCage...

[quote]Has there ever been a bitchier awards acceptance speech?

Why, yes...yes there has...

(Jump to 3:45 for some Mike Love wig-snatching)

La Cage aux Folles is a better show than Sunday in the Park With George. La Cage has the better score and its Tony win was well deserved. The original production of La Cage was fabulous top to bottom and don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise (top or bottom.)

It was Sondheim who started the bitch fight in Merrily We Roll Along, where Jason Alexander hums a variation on Some Enchanted Evening by way of illustrating the middle-brow musical thrills the public demands. Sondheim was ragging on shows like Hello, Dolly! and Mame, whose scores aim for mass appeal rather than deep-dish appreciation.

Herman had many failures on Broadway between Mame in 1966 and La Cage in 1983. People told him he washed up and that his kind of show had gone out of style forever. La Cage was a long overdue return to the top of the heap for him. Herman and Stephen Schwartz are the only two composer/lyricists to score three shows that ran over 1500 performances in their original Broadway runs.

Herman had the good showmanship to retire at the top of his game after La Cage aux Folles. Many of Broadway's other great songwriters ended their careers by churning out sub-par work in their declining years.

You leave 'La Cage' with 'Best Of Times' and 'I Am What I Am' embedded, and each is an uplifting moment.

The coming together in SITPWG of 'Sunday' however is indeed a great theatrical experience - the hard-won culmination of finishing the hat, where there never was a hat.

Possibly Sondheim was amused that the Pulitzer committee, in awarding him their prize that year, overlooked any need for simple hummable show tunes.

Sunday didn't get it's Pulizer until the following year (1985) probably as a makeup for the Tony loss.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is awarded to "a distinguished play by an American playwright, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life." Sunday in the Park With George was likely the only musical to open on Broadway that season that met those qualifications, allowing it to compete with straight plays for that honor.

Here's the thing. Herman has talked about this moment multiple times - including on Theatre Talk. He's claimed that the comment had nothing to do with Sondheim or Sunday, but at his surprise and delight that he could still have a hit show on Broadway in the 80s. He believed that - and he was largely right - that the time for his style of music and his style of big, old fashioned musical comedy had passed. So, when his show ended up being a massive hit, a critical success and a Tony winner, he was overjoyed. As I recall, on that same Theatre Talk ep where he was asked about that moment, he said that he had great admiration for Sondheim and called him a "genius". Is it possible he's painting a rosier picture of the past than the reality? Sure, but I think he's answered this question multiple times over the years and has been very gracious toward Sondheim. They might not be best friends, but I'm going to give the old boy the benefit of the doubt on this one. I really think it's butthurt Sondheim fans who wanted to make this moment bigger than it was. And I say that as someone who ADORES Sunday In the Park With George.

Here's Jerry laughing heartily at a joke Bea Arthur tells about Sondheim's superior abilities. Seems like a good sport to me.

That was heartfelt R19, but also supremely lame. Who are you and why should we give a fuck?

[quote]Possibly Sondheim was amused that the Pulitzer committee, in awarding him their prize that year, overlooked any need for simple hummable show tunes.

He's proven he can write them, he just chooses not to.

Yeah sure, R21, those pesky melodies? Who needs 'em!

The argument that Sondheim doesn't write interesting, beautiful, hummable, moving melodies is so tired. His scores are not beloved solely because of his brilliant lyrics. The way some people (still, apparently) talk about him as though he were some avant garde, atonal experimental composer just makes me laugh. He might have been more daring, adventurous and cerebral than any of his contemporaries, but there is so much heart, so much love in the melodies as well. He's a populist. If he weren't, he'd probably have emulated his professor Milton Babbitt and have ended up being some slightly obscure mid to late 20th century classical composer.

I'm a pretty hard core Sondheimite and I never saw this as a slam. If Sunday hadn't been competing against La Cage, Jerry still would have said the exact same thing upon winning.

R13, I'm fascinated that you know "Finishing the Hat" but not "I Am What I Am."

R5, Rita Moreno is a low rent dumpster woman, so nothing she does surprises me. Nothing!

Sunday in the Park is about american life? R18

This is how you accept your Tony with class.

It was his choice of words that made him sound a little antagonistic. "WELL it's alive and well at The Palace" doesn't exactly ring like someone who's humbled by or astonished at the win. Maybe he didn't mean it, but it came accross cocky and competitive.

[quote]Sunday in the Park is about american life? [R18]

Only the first half of the second act, which takes place in Chicago.

[quote]If Sunday hadn't been competing against La Cage, Jerry still would have said the exact same thing upon winning

Doubtful. And even so, it still would have been a bitchy slam.

Well, as we all know, Jerry Herman IS a bitter bitch. Why do you think he's lived as long as he has, esp. with HIV?

It's his vitriol that keeps him alive - at least so he can outlive that other queen, Sondheim.

That's a real stretch, r30. Nothing about "Sunday in the.." comments on American life.

John Napier, stoned, bitter and choking on his own venom, wins the Tony Award for designing the set for Les Miserables and then berates the Tony committee for not nominating his work for Starlight Express. This is the epitome of ungraciousness.

It is worth noting that Napier's very dangerous set for Starlight resulted in almost as many cast injuries as the set from Spider-man -- probably more, considering that Starlight ran longer and that his set for Sunset Boulevard constantly malfunctioned.

I just looked it up and that same night he won another Tony for his costumes in Starlight Express! What a little bitch! Wikipedia says he married a woman in 2014.

Notice at R-28's clip how Madeline Kahn is startled when Ed Asner first says her name. Did she for a moment believe that she had won?

[quote]The original production of La Cage was fabulous top to bottom

And that's how we arranged the Cagelles-- top to bottom.

The version of "Sunday" they did on that Sondheim birthday tribute a few years back was amazing-- with all of the younger singers coming down the aisles and filling up the stage.

[quote]It's his vitriol that keeps him alive - at least so he can outlive that other queen, Sondheim.

Well that'll be a bittersweet victory. Tributes will be fulsome, as befits genius. The rich legacy will begin. Not perhaps the best of times for a would-be coffin-dancer.

I honestly didn't know Jerry Herman was still alive. Does he live in NYC? It must kill him to see the way Sondheim is worshipped these days.

My favorite Tony acceptance ever was Marian Seldes.

Why didn't Jerry Herman write any shows after La Cage aux Folles? If I'm not mistaken, that was his last one, way back in '83, yet he's still been alive and kicking for the last three decades.

As someone firmly in the Herman camp I don't think his speech was bitchy at all. As for Herman's later work - he did Mrs. Santa Clause with Angela Lansbury for tv (several catchy tunes natch), and Miss Spectacular for Vegas - over the top - but enjoyable - production numbers. These were not Broadway shows, but still have old-time Broadway type songs. Funny thing is though Herman loved and was influenced by the music of Irving Berlin, I actually prefer his work to Berlin's. I grew up with show-tune loving parents - they had all the cast albums of the 60s. To this day I love that music, with Jerry Herman my favorite. Sondheim's music just does not resonate with me, but it's all just a matter of taste or opinion really.

Jerry Herman will never be President.

I loved both Sunday and La Cage. I think it's a supreme example of apples and oranges.

Jerry lived for years in LA during the "dark period." e even wrote La Cage out there. After the Tony, he became a house flipper and interior decorator. Now I think he lives in Miami, with all the other old Jews.

Herman was probably overwhelmed with relief that La Cage aux Folles was one show that would never star Lucille Ball, no matter when it was filmed.

Why do he and his representatives make it so difficult to get another [italic]Dolly[/italic] or [italic]Mame[/italic] off the boards while they managed to make a [italic]La Cage[/italic] revival happen? There hasn't been a Broadway [italic]Mame[/italic] since 1983 or a [italic]Dolly[/italic] since 1994, yet we managed to get two [italic]Annie[/italic] revivals, two [italic]Gypsy[/italic] revivals, more Rodgers & Hammerstein than you can shake a stick at, and of course Sondheim and Lloyd Webber up to your ears! And we're about to get [italic]My Fair Lady[/italic] and [italic]Oliver![/italic]again. The best of times is now. [italic]Mame[/italic] is especially relevant today because of the Upsons' anti-semitism and the controversy over the Confederate flag putting the culture of the South in the hot spot yet again.

Angie did [italic]Mrs. Santa Claus[/italic] because they wanted to redo [italic]Mame[/italic] for TV but she felt that at 69—7 years older than Lucy when she did it—she was too old. I haven't watched it since it first aired on TV.

That Napier clip is shocking in its outright rudeness! I think that other bitchy British queen designer Bob Crowley was equally ungracious when he won a Tony the year his bomb TARZAN lost. Can't remember what he won for that year but it certainly wasn't for anything related to TARZAN.

Those Brits come over here and take all the jobs (and Tonys) and are so damn ungrateful.

I fear that soon they'll be dimming the lights on Broadway a bit more than usual over the next few years. So many key Golden Age figures are over 80.

I doubt it, R50. They didn't dim them for Kyle Jean-Baptiste. Why would they dim them for Jerry Herman?

You are kidding, right, R51?

Thank you, R34, for posting that clip. What a loathsome little creep. And, on top of it all, to mumble and leave sentences unfinished with an "Aw, shucks" air, as though he were being shy about it. As another poster pointed out, the Starlight set created problems for the performers. It didn't deserve a nomination.

As far as that goes, Les Mis wasn't great to look at, either. It was the use of the projected time-and-place captions, giving the action a You Are There quality, that made the visuals work so well.

If we're talking general awards show acceptance speeches, then this would be the clear winner.

A little more makeup wouldn't have hurt either.

bump

Yikes! That was Bette in one of her down periods. She looks awful there.

Lol, that is pretty cunty, OP.