50 Kristins for Kristin's 50th

by Jorge Molina

Today, Tony, Emmy and Grammy-winner (that’s right, she only needs an Oscar to EGOT; get on it, Hollywood) and human ray of sunshine Kristin Chenoweth turns 50 years old. To honor her career, her legacy, and that impossibly high pitch matched only by her charisma, let’s take a look at 50 roles and appearances that she has gifted the world in almost three decades of work, in no particular order:

1) Her Broadway debut in an adaptation of Moliére’s Scapin as Hyacinth in 1996. 

2 & 3) Her two most iconic Broadway roles: A featured Tony-winning turn as Sally in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1999, and the Best Actress Tony-nominated performance as Glinda, the Good Witch in the world phenomenon that was Wicked in 2003.

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Come to "Show Business: The Road to Broadway" this Sunday!

by Nathaniel R

Hello all. A week or so ago I moderated a screening of Mean Girls (2004) for Show-Score's new Stage and Screen series with two members of the new stage musical's team (The Broadway version of Tina Fey's classic officially opens this Sunday).

I'm doing another Q&A so come! This Sunday at 1:00 PM I'll be speaking with director/producer Dori Berinstein about her documentary Show Business: The Road to Broadway (2007) which follows four musicals during the seminal 2003/2004 Broadway season: the blockbuster Wicked, the little scrappy show that could (and did) Avenue Q, Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori's brilliant Caroline or Change, and the troubled Boy George musical Taboo.  I saw all the big shows that year (a rare occurrence) and loved all four of the musicals this doc follows so that season remains special to my heart.

The movie has awesome rehearsal and backstage footage and all sorts of brilliant taking heads like Tony Kushner, Carol Channing, Alan Cumming and many more.

Idina and Kristin rehearsing Wicked in 2003.

When: Sunday, April 8 at 1:00 PM
Where: Peter Norton Symphony Space's Leonard Nimoy Thalia (2537 Broadway at 95th).

If you'd like to attend as my guest, please e-mail me and I'll arrange it. Would love to have some TFE readers there! Come support my stage fright AND see a fun movie that isn't streaming anywhere.

Showbiz History: Irene Dunne's Near-Record, Brittany Murphy's Untimely Death, Scream's Release

Today in showbiz history if you need something to celebrate with the world ending* and all...
*too dramatic? That's what it feels like lately, is all... 

1812 "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is published. They never stop influencing popular culture thereafter. 
1880 Broadway gets the nickname "The Great White Way" when it's first lit up by electricity
1892 Phileas Fog completes his trip 'round the globe in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days (later adapted to the screen)
1898 Irene Dunne, one of the greatest actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age was born on this day in Kentucky. She went on to five leading actress nominations (my favorite is The Awful Truth, 1937) without ever winning.

WHY THAT'S A BIG DEAL IN OSCAR HISTORY IS REVEALED AFTER THE JUMP...

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"Wicked" is Finally Officially For Real Coming Soon

Musical lovers have finally gotten the long rumored news they've impatiently waited for: Wicked is officially a go! The film will be directed by Stephen Daldry and open on December 20, 2019 - a likely guaranteed holiday hit like Into the Woods and Les Miserables.

While that is still awhile to wait for the big screen adaptation, this announcement comes after more than a decade of crumbs and non-starting rumors for the fanbase. The hope for original stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth has long gone out the window, so casting is the next phase to obsess over. While Universal likes to keep their musicals star loaded (think Les Mis and Mamma Mia), my suspicion is that some expected names won't be in the running... sorry, Lea Michele.

Which is all the better for the green leading lady. Daldry has a gift for finding new talent, so why not give us a new talent to make Elphaba's sense of discovery all the more meaningful. Maybe if it's not a completely fresh face this could be where a Broadway star shows up. Also how many times can we hear "Defying Gravity" before those notes aren't as emotionally transporting? Give us someone who can take us to unexpected emotional and musical heights! Recent Tony winner Cynthia Erivo, for example - her Tony's solo should be all the proof you need (starts at 2:48).

For Glinda, I have a bolder recommendation...

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Alexander the Great and Judy the Greatest

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

323 BC Alexander the Great dies of an unknown illness. Colin Farrell plays him in a movie centuries and centuries later and it's suggested that it's a combo of Typhus, Bad Wigs, and Loving Jared Leto that does him in. Who could survive that combo? (Remember when Baz Luhrmann was going to make an Alexander movie, too, but Oliver Stone beat him to it? We wish it had been the other way around.)
38 AD Julia Drusilla dies in Rome. In the infamous Bob Guccione movie Caligula (1979) her brother Caligula (Malcom McDowell) is shown licking her corpse. Somehow that's not remotely the most perverted thing in the movie!
1692 Bridget Bishop is executed for "Detestable Arts called Witchcraft & Sorceries." She's the first victim of the notorious Salem Witch Trials that will claim many lives and inspire many works of art including The Crucible and The VVitch and so on. 

1889 Sessue Hayakawa is born in Japan, becomes an international silent screen superstar. Later Oscar nominated for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
1895 Hattie McDaniel is born. Becomes a major studio player in Hollywood, the first black actor to win an Oscar, and appears in many classic films albeit as The Help. We only wish Monique were ambitious about her film career and would work on that biopic that was suggested. It'd be so rich.
1901 Frederick Loewe is born. Meets Alan Jay Lerner 41 years later and the rest is movie and stage musical history: My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, Gigi, Camelot, etcetera... 
1922  Frances Ethel Gumm is born. Becomes Judy Garland, "The World's Greatest Entertainer" and one of the greatest movie stars of all time. (Easy top ten for me. How about you?) We hope you're enjoying Anne-Marie's current series "Judy by the Numbers". 
1936 Soyuzmultfilm, influential animation studio of the former Soviet Union, is founded
1963 Sex god Tony Ward is born. Becomes super model, Madonna plaything ("Justify My Love" / "Sex"), and Bruce La Bruce's Hustler White (1996)
1974 Dustin Lance Black is born. Later wins the Oscar for writing Milk (2008) but, weirdly, no one threatens to take the statue back when he writes J Edgar (2011)

1985 Claus von Bulow is acquitted on attempted murder charges of his heiress wife. Jeremy Irons wins an Oscar playing him in Reversal of Fortune just five years later while the heiress wife (Glenn Close) narrates the morbid proceedings. Quibblers, including me, suggest that the Oscar was in part for that awful Dead Ringers (1988) snub two years prior.
1988 Big Business opens starring two Lily Tomlins and two Bette Midlers. Double the pleasure
2003 Wicked opens on Broadway. It goes on to gross billions. Still no movie in sight and it'll already be old hat by the time we get one. (sigh)
2007 The final episode of The Sopranos cuts to black. Do you ever think about that show now?