It's been three years since Rick McKay's documentary BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE premiered in small cinemas, but it only becomes more and more vital as each year passes to theater history.
Unlike most documentaries of musical theater which retell a textbook-style history of musical theater (i.e. SHOWBOAT to OKLAHOMA to HAIR to HAIRSPRAY), McKay's film simply interviews dozens upon dozens upon dozens of actors from the 1940s through 60s. They retell not a history, but a long-lost culture of what it was like and what it meant to be an actor in New York when Broadway was at its heyday.
And why does it become more important as time goes on? Because more and more of the people he interviewed are now dead: Ann Miller, Comden and Green, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Fred Ebb, Cy Feuer, Uta Hagen, Al Hirschfeld, Jerry Orbach, John Raitt, Fay Wray, Phil Ford, Kim Hunter, Wendy Wasserstein, Gwen Verdon, Vincent Sherman,
And as announced today, Gretchen Wyler and Charles Nelson Reilly, both of whom were featured heavily in the film.