The Tonys Return: A Year and a Half Late, But Right OnTime

by Patrick Ball

Hamilton, just celebrated at the Emmys, swept the Tonys six years ago.

Eighteen months after Broadway’s curtains dropped due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, they finally rose again last week as New Yorkers and theater lovers across the country welcomed their favorite witches, lions, and founding fathers back to Broadway. Correspondingly, The American Theater Wing and The Broadway League have set the 74th annual Tony Awards for the curtailed 2019-2020 Broadway season for this Sunday. Yes, you read that right, this weekend awards are finally being handed out for productions from an eligibility window that ran from the literal *summer* of 2019 to February 2020 -- a lifetime ago! (It's been two years and three months since the 73rd annual Tony Awards were held.)

Luckily, theater-related talent and content has been gracing our screens in abundance over the past year to help ease the wait...

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Review: 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie' Knows How To Put On a Show

By: Christopher James

Sometimes saccharine is just sweet enough. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie piles it on thick, but what else are drag queens supposed to do when applying their makeup. Amazon Prime’s latest film acquisition is a charming delight. It’s packed with warmth, heart and plenty of sass. While it is very much a story rooted in the now, Jamie’s love of drag comes from understanding of the queens that came before him. In fact, what’s so interesting about the film is that the main antagonists aren’t his peers (though some are harsh), it’s from a generation above that hasn’t evolved with the times.

Simply put, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a crowd pleaser worthy of any crown...

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Posterized: Jennifer Hudson

by Nathaniel R

With Respect, the Aretha Franklin biopic, hitting theaters today let's talk Jennifer Hudson's movie career. Well, her TV and Broadway career, too, since she's primarily a singer even when moonlighting as an actress. She's made more movies than you probably think.

How many of her performances have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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Esther Williams @ 100: Million Dollar Mermaid

Team Experience has been celebrating Esther Williams Centennial with a three part miniseries. Previously we featured Thrill of a Romance and Neptune's Daughter. 

by Cláudio Alves

In some ways, Million Dollar Mermaid is both the quintessential Esther Williams movie and a departure in the screen siren's career. During the 1940s, Williams achieved cinematic stardom through self-knowing exercises in romantic silliness and musical extravagance, lighthearted productions that wore their escapist possibilities as a badge of honor. One can often feel the screenwriter's strain, trying to shoe-horn swimming scenes in stories that could function just as well without them. Even the baseball comedy Take Me Out to the Ball Game had to be retrofitted into having an out-of-place pool number where Williams gets to lip-sync while swimming under the gaze of Busby Berkeley's camera. Consequentially, MGM never presented Williams as a great dramatic actress, preferring to exhalt her natural charms, radiant presence, and aquatic athleticism.

Loosely inspired in the life of Australian professional swimmer, vaudevillian, and early movie star Annette Kellerman, Million Dollar Mermaid is a lavish biopic with inspirational aspirations...

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Esther Williams @ 100: "Thrill of a Romance"

Team Experience is celebrating Esther Williams' Centennial.

by Nathaniel R

"Do you mind if I watch, too?" a businessman in a parked car shouts from outside a swimming pool -- a pretty swimming instructor, has asked her students to watch her do a swan dive. "Not at all," she says with a dulcet tone and flirty smile. Moments later the businessman is grilling the child to tell him everything he knows about his teacher including where she lives (!) This is the opening scene from 1945's Thrill of a Romance and courtship was, um, different. Who knows about this fictional swimming instructor but the actress playing her was already used to being gawked at, even before movie cameras arrived.

Esther Williams, the athlete turned movie star, was born on this day one hundred years ago in Inglewood, California. By the time she was 16 she was a national swimming champion with Olympic dreams. A couple of years later she was a star in the Aquacade (paired with another swimming champion, Johnny Weismuller, already a movie star). MGM signed her in 1941 and she became a popular WW II pin-up girl in her endless swimsuit photos. Meanwhile the movies back home were making her yet more famous. 

Which brings us to Thrill of a Romance (1945)...

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