PAUL NEWMAN - PAUL NEWMAN A TV FOOTNOTE

PAUL NEWMAN A TV FOOTNOTE

It is not included even as a footnote in the obituaries about Paul Newman that have appeared since his death on Friday, but the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Broadcasting) rescued Paul Newman's only singing performance from what had been thought to be oblivion. Newman co-starred with Eva Marie Saint (with whom he sang a duet) and Frank Sinatra in a musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town in 1975. The late songwriter Sammy Cahn, who with Jimmy Van Heusen wrote the music for the production, claimed in his 1974 autobiography I Should Care that Wilder was so dubious about turning his play into a musical that he agreed to sell the rights for a single broadcast only and insisted that any kinescope recordings be destroyed after the program was aired. Cahn said that Wilder was in fact so upset with the live telecast that he phoned NBC executives the morning after the telecast and demanded that they fulfill their agreement and destroy all copies. However, a black-and-white copy eventually turned up in the collection of the Paley Center in New York and Beverly Hills. (The show was broadcast in color and aired live across the U.S.; at the time, kinescope recordings were rarely, if ever, made in color.) The show's most memorable tune was "Love and Marriage," which later became the theme of the TV sitcom Married ... With Children.

29/09/2008