well, That's Show Biz, 12-15-2024 3-36 Fan Favorites 7

Fan Favorites 7

“Well, That’s Show Biz!”

12-15-2024

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• Welcome to “well, That’s Show Biz!”. I am your host, Jeremy Freedman, and every week I bring you music from Broadway, Movies, and Entertainers along with some anecdotes, information, and commentary all based on a theme.

• I asked fans to send me their lists of 5-10 favorite musicals and would create a show based on their lists. This is the 7th of those shows which I call Fan Favorites.

•  This fan actually sent me 11 of her favorite musicals. The more musicals on a list means fewer songs from that show. I do not think that these musicals are in any particular order so I just went with the order she sent me.

• The first show on her list was the favorite show of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein that they themselves wrote. It also is my favorite of theirs as well. It is an absolutely beautiful show even though one of the major themes is spousal abuse that is accepted by everyone in the show. It was a different time. From 1945s Carousel, here is “If I Loved You”.

• You just heard “If I Loved You” from the Fan Favorite Musical, Carousel.

• The composer of this next Fan Favorite musical did not live to see its opening night, passing away from an aortic dissection the night before it opened. The musical was based on Puccini’s opera, La Boheme, and tells the story of poor artists struggling to survive in New York’s East Village during the height of the AIDS epidemic. From Jonathan Larson’s Rent, here is “Seasons Of Love”.

• You just heard “Seasons Of Love” from the Fan Favorite Musical, Rent.

• The next Fan Favorite Musical contains composer Stephen Sondheim’s favorite song out of everything he had written. The show tells the story of the westernization of Japan. The song that was Sondheim’s favorite describes the negotiations between the Japanese and Americans as experienced by two witnesses but from three points of view.  Here is that song, “Someone In a Tree” from Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.

• You just heard “Someone In a Tree” from Fan Favorite, Pacific Overtures.

• I asked fans to send me their lists of favorite musicals and I would create a show around those lists. This is the 7th of these shows which I call Fan Favorites.

• The fourth musical on her list opened on Broadway in 1972 and when it closed eight years later in 1980, it had become the longest running show on Broadway up to that time. The show used sounds and themes from 50s rock music. From the Fan Favorite Musical, Grease, here is “Summer Nights”.

• You just heard “Summer Nights” from the Fan Favorite Musical, Grease.

• The next musical on her list is about a teenage boy with severe social anxiety who invents a lie after one of his classmate commits suicide. From the film version of the Fan Favorite Musical Dear Evan Hansen, we are going to hear “Sincerely Me”.

• You just heard “Sincerely Me” from the Fan Favorite Musical Dear Evan Hansen.

• Before we take a little break, the next Fan Favorite Musical is by Willie Russell, more known for his plays and movie versions of Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. His musical, Blood Brothers, is a story of nature vs nurture, involving fraternal twins. It had a short run in London in 1983 but its 1991 revival ran for 24 years in the West End. It also had a successful Broadway run with one of the replacement casts starring David and Shaun  Cassidy as the brothers and Petulia Clark as their mother. They went on to do the national tour and the International Cast Album. From that album, here’s “Bright New Day”.

• You just heard “Bright New Day” from Blood Brothers as we listen to Fan Favorites today on “well, That’s Show Biz!”

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• You are listening to “well, That’s Show Biz!” on [Station ID].

• I asked fans to send me their lists of Favorite musicals and I would create shows around those lists. This is the 7th of those shows that I call Fan Favorites. If you want a show based on your list of favorite musicals, send me your list of 5 – 10 favorite musicals, Broadway or Movie, to me at wruushowbiz@gmail.com.

• The next show on this fan’s list is a musical based on Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly with the setting changed to the Vietnam War in the 1970s. From Fan Favorite Musical, Miss Saigon, here is “The Last Night of the World”.

• You just heard “The Last Night of the World” from the Fan Favorite Musical, Miss Saigon.

• Next on her list is a musical based on William Shakespeare’s, The Taming of the Shrew. It was Cole Porter’s answer to Rodgers and Hamerstein where his music and lyric were connected to the plot and it was his only show to run for more than 1000 performances. From the 2019 revival of the Fan Favorite Musical, Kiss Me, Kate, here is Kelli O’Hara singing “I Hate Men”.

• You just heard “I Hate Men” from Fan Favorite Kiss Me, Kate.

• Next we have two songs from the Fan Favorite Musical based on stories by Damon Runyon.  Here are “I’ve Never Been In Love Before” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from the original production of Guys and Dolls.

• You just heard “I’ve Never Been In Love Before” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from the Fan Favorite Musical,  Guys and Dolls.

• Next on her list is the final musical from the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. We are going to hear first from the film version of The Sound of Music, “The Lonely Goatherd” and we will follow that with the very last song written by Oscar Hammerstein, “Edelweiss”. Here is The Sound of Music.

• We just heard “The Lonely Goatherd” and “Edelweiss” from the Fan Favorite Musical, The Sound of Music.

• And now for her final show on her list of Favorite musicals. This 1963 musical is the third adaptation of the 1937 Czechoslovakian play, Parfumerie, the first being the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner and then the 1949 musical film, In The Good Old Summer Time. From the 2016 revival of She Loves Me, here is Zachary Levy, better known to today’s generation as the superhero, Shazam, with the title song.

• You just heard the title song from the Fan Favorite Musical She Loves Me. If you would like your list of Favorite Musicals to have a show, send me your lists of 5 – 10 favorite musicals, Broadway or Movie, to me at wruushowbiz@gmail.com.

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