Broadway Bound: The Musicals That Never Came to Broadway

Bea Arthur spent her career playing women who could level a grown man with a single look. So naturally she starred in A Mother's Kisses, a musical about a stage mother so terrifying she makes Mama Rose look like Maria Von Trapp. This week, we explore the show that seemed perfectly suited to Bea's talents and ask a simple question: can a star be too right for a role? Along the way, we'll uncover a...

Season 3 is almost here! This season on Broadway Bound: The Musicals That Never Came to Broadway, we're turning the spotlight on the stars who thought Broadway would be their next triumph... and discovered it had other plans. Join Robert W. Schneider as he explores the stories behind Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Bea Arthur, Jerry Lewis, Ginger Rogers, Anthony Newley, Barbara Cook, Robert Preston,...

60 Songs 50 Years 9 Leads 5 Directors 4 Scripts 1 Sondheim We close our second season with the story of Stephen Sondheim's half century quest to bring musical life to the true story of 1920s schemers Addison and Wilson Mizner. Whether you knew it as A Sentimental Guy, Wise Guys, Gold, Get Rich Quick, Bounce, or Road Show, this episode will give you a glimpse into never before heard communication b...

If I said to you I have a score by Guys and Dolls’ Frank Loesser, book by Kiss Me Kate’s Sam Spewack, directed by the one and only Bob Fosse, and starring television personality Phyllis Newman, you’d probably ask where could you invest because this is gonna be bigger than talking pictures! But, it wasn’t? Why? Why did all of these wonderful people struggle with making Russian expansion funny and m...

I never miss an Arthur Miller musical! Yes, you read that correctly. Arthur Miller, the voice of gritty American realism, whose plays confronted capitalism, communism, and catastrophe one day woke up and decided to be the next Jerry Herman. You see what happened was.... Well, you will need to listen to our episode about UP FROM PARADISE to find out! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphon...

What do Leonard Bernstein, James Joyce, woolly mammoths, Bebe Neuwirth, the ice age, and Mario Cantone all have in common? They all tried to succeed by the skin of their teeth in John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joseph Stein's musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's meta-theatrical experience titled The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, Over and Over, All About Us..... Learn mo...

In 1960, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt created theater history when their whimsical musical, The Fantasticks, the little show that no one believed in, opened and would not close until forty years later. Twenty-seven years later they would say “Smart New York money says we're not what's happening at the moment. We are perceived as the past. The perspective of us needs to be altered,” and so they plu...

It might end up being one the longest partnerships in the history of the American Musical. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the lyricists of On the Town, Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing, Do Re Mi, Applause, On the 20th Century, the screenplay writers of Singing in the Rain, and the duo that gave the world phrases like “New York, New York, it’s a helluva town!” “Never Never land!” “Make Someone Hap...

Before Lin Manuel Miranda....before Jason Robert Brown....before Jonathan Larson....there was Meredith Willson, the one man band who gave the world its most American of musicals, The Music Man. But what happens when the music man wants to change his tune? And change it while being confronted with every major life crisis imaginable? Join Christopher Columbus, Meredith Willson, and Chita Rivera in a...

Composer Cy Coleman gave Broadway some of its most iconic melodies: Big Spender, Real Live Girl, Hey, Look Me Over, and the list goes on and on. He was the King of 60s smooth swing and had never once closed a show out of town….until…. Along with a wild crew including a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a testy choreographer, a director unsure of the material, and a leading man who was as eccentri...

Trigger Warning: This episode deals with pedophilia If there was source material that no one ever thought could be a musical, you would go to one man to write it. Not Lin Manuel Miranda. Not Stephen Sondheim. Not even Oscar Hammerstein. You would go to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner who, along with Frederick Loewe, created Brigadoon, Camelot, and the juggernaut known as My Fair Lady. But when Loewe choo...

In 1977, Martin Charnin, Charles Strouse, and Thomas Meehan, looked at one another on the opening night of Annie and said five magic words to one another “This show will run forever!” Thirteen years later, Charnin, Strouse, and Meehan looked at one another on the opening night of Annie 2 and said another five words to one another “We wrote the wrong show.” See what happened was…..well, guess you w...

Join Broadway historian, director, and all around MT nerd Robert W. Schneider for a wild and exhaustively researched celebration of the musicals that had set their sights on Broadway but missed the mark. This trailer looks at the second season of Broadway Bound which is called "YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR LAST" and explores ten Broadway Bound musicals that were written by major songwriters. From a...

When we think of "out of town" tryouts we think of Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Detroit, Tokyo….. Yes, Tokyo! In the 1970s Tokyo had become the center of Japanese culture and it was giving its citizens home grown movies, literature, plays, and paintings but it had not given its public a musical that was cultivated in Japan. So what better option than an hour adaptation of Gone With The Wind? W...

This one is a heart-breaker, friends. A real, honest to Sondheim heart-breaker. Like Avenue Q beating Wicked heart-breaker because, unless without a deus ex machina at Paramount Studios, we will never, ever see a musical that everyone says was one of the greatest musicals of the 1990s. Starring Christine Ebersole, Gregory Harrison, and......wait, why should I tell you when book writer Martin Casel...

What do a nine minute song about a bird, the chest hair of Israel's greatest entertainer, an FBI pursuit of a missing lead sheet, and a list of firings as long as Paul Sorvino's range have in common? They were all part of the madcap, wild, manic, and tumultuous ride of Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein's The Baker's Wife. Get ready as original cast members Carole Demas, Kurt Peterson, Teri Ralston...

What happens when the doctor becomes the patient? Abe Burrows, the greatest script doctor of the Golden Age, had agreed to direct and write the musical adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Only problem is no one told him what they wanted...or expected... Soon, it was a troubled musical with different titles, different book-writers (including Edward Albee), America's cutest TV stars floundering wi...

Gwen Verdon was Charity. Raul Julia was Guido. Angela Lansbury was Juliet......then was not. Federico Fellini was Italy’s most iconic film director of the 1960s so its no surprise that many of his films have been turned into musicals. But, there is a Fellini movie that screams to be a musical, even more so than any of the others and it almost was…with Angela Lansbury in the title role….grab a pizz...

It was supposed to be the musical that turned Latinx characters in musical theater from hoodlums and gang members to heroes and inspirations! A musical that was steeped in the rhythms of Latinx history and a story that would examine assimilation and appropriation within the immigration experience. So why was creator Arne Glimcher leaving his heart, and show, in San Francisco? Well you see what hap...

Some musicals have all the luck...and them some do not. Minsky's is one that does not. It would take thirty plus years for this cult classic to make its way from the big screen to the big stage and in between it would have three different lyricists, two different directors, two choreographers, but it would always have the same composer: Charles Strouse. Why was he so determined to get this movie t...

Tommy Tune. The boy genius of Broadway. He dazzled audiences onstage in his Tony Award winning performance in Seesaw. Then he kept reinventing himself as a director with The Club, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Cloud Nine, Nine, Grand Hotel, The Will Rogers Follies. Nothing could stop him except…..well, we’re gonna let producer Barry Weissler tell you in this week’s episode which explores th...

Are you trying to musicalize me, Mrs. Robinson? Oh, yes, Benjamin Braddock, they are trying to musicalize you, and Mrs. Robinson, and Elaine, all of you. They are going to keep going until every critic in New York is banging on a church window begging you to stop. And who is giving you these songs to sing, Mrs. Robinson? Simon and Garfunkel? Nope. Not at all. Sharing a xylophone (yes, a xylophone)...

So no one told you creating musicals was going to be this way? (clap, clap, clap) Now you might be asking, what in the name of Smelly Cat does the TV show Friends have to do with Broadway? Well, before Marta Kauffman and David Crane created that quintessential 90s sitcom, they were musical theater writers and had their hearts set on The Great Bright Way. But, they had to pivot. What happened was…....

Join Broadway historian, director, and all around MT nerd Robert W. Schneider for a wild and exhaustively researched celebration of the musicals that had set their sights on Broadway but missed the mark. This trailer looks at the first season of Broadway Bound which is called "HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD" and explores ten Broadway Bound musicals that were based on movies. From Angela Lansbury refusing to...