Damn Yankees! | |
---|---|
Genre | Comedy Musical Sport |
Written by | George Abbott Douglass Wallop |
Directed by | Kirk Browning |
Starring | Phil Silvers Lee Remick Jerry Lanning |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producer | Alvin Cooperman |
Production location | NBC Brooklyn Studios |
Editor | Jack Shultis |
Running time | 100 minutes |
Production company | NBC |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | April 8, 1967 |
Damn Yankees! is a 1967 American TV adaptation directed by Kirk Browning of the baseball musical Damn Yankees . [1]
Longtime sportscaster and NBC host Joe Garagiola supplied an on-camera set-up to the background for the story’s premise of envy of the successful New York Yankees team.
The pop-art production design and staging [2] featured collage animation and early examples of color Chroma key compositing to achieve traveling mattes for TV. [3]
It was recorded at NBC's Brooklyn Studios and “colorcast“ on April 8, 1967 as a production of a relaunched G.E. Theater which ran from late 60s into early 70s.
Note: All the principal cast were singers, so they could all supply their own vocals for the soundtrack without being dubbed.
George Francis Abbott was an American theatre producer, director, playwright, screenwriter, film director and producer whose career spanned eight decades. He received numerous honors including six Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1982. the National Medal of Arts in 1990. and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Herman Raymond Walston was an American actor and comedian. Walston started his career on Broadway earning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees (1956).
Damn Yankees is a 1955 musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., during a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball. It is based on Wallop's 1954 novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
Jean Stapleton was an American character actress of stage, television and film. Stapleton is best known for her portrayal of Edith Bunker, the perpetually optimistic and devoted wife of Archie Bunker, on the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, a role that earned her three Emmys and two Golden Globes for Best Actress in a comedy series. She also made occasional appearances on the All in the Family follow-up series Archie Bunker's Place, but asked to be written out of the show during the first season due to becoming tired of the role.
Rae Julia Theresa Abruzzo, professionally known as Rae Allen, was an American actress of stage, film and television. Her career spanned some seventy years and eight decades.
Lee Arthur Horsley is an American film, television, and theater actor known for starring roles in the television series Nero Wolfe (1981), Matt Houston (1982–1985), and Paradise (1988–1991). He starred in the 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer and recorded the audiobook edition of Lonesome Dove.
Randy Lynn Graff is an American actress and singer.
The Civil War is a musical written by Gregory Boyd and Frank Wildhorn, with lyrics by Jack Murphy and music by Wildhorn. The musical centers on the American Civil War, with the musical numbers portraying the war through Union, Confederate, and slave viewpoints. The musical was nominated for two Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. Its styles include gospel, folk, country, rock, and rhythm and blues.
Joe Layton was an American director and choreographer known primarily for his work on Broadway.
Shannon Bolin was an American actress and singer. A March 10, 1941, article in The Mason City Globe-Gazette said that she was "known as 'The Lady with the Dark Blue Voice'".
Damn Yankees is a 1958 American widescreen musical sports romantic comedy film. It was directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen from a screenplay by Abbott, adapted from his and Douglass Wallop's book of the 1955 musical of the same name, itself based on the 1954 novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Wallop. The story line is a take on the Faust legend and centers on the New York Yankees and Washington Senators baseball teams. With the exception of Tab Hunter in the role of Joe Hardy, the Broadway principals reprise their stage roles, including Gwen Verdon as Lola.
The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant is a 1954 novel by Douglass Wallop. It adapts the Faust theme of a deal with the Devil to the world of American baseball in the 1950s.
Rosemary Kuhlmann was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and Broadway musical actress best known for originating the role of the Mother in Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned for television. Kuhlmann portrayed the role on the annual live NBC broadcast of the production from 1951 through 1962.
Kirk Browning was an American television director and producer who had hundreds of productions to his credit, including 185 broadcasts of Live from Lincoln Center.
Russell Brown was an American actor of stage, television, and screen. He also had a career as a journalist, working for several newspapers in the city of Philadelphia. On stage, he is a best known for his Tony Award-winning role of Benny Van Buren in the 1955 Broadway musical Damn Yankees; a role he also reprised on film in 1958. Other highlights of his work in film were his portrayal of Captain Brackett in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1958 movie version of the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific, and as park caretaker George Lemon in the classic courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder (1959). On television he portrayed the recurring character of Thomas Jones, the father of the title character, in the legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones from 1960–1962.
The Washington Senators were one of the American League's eight charter franchises.
Androcles and the Lion is a 1967 American TV special. It is a musical adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play Androcles and the Lion.
In 1960, ABC returned to baseball broadcasting with a series of late-afternoon Saturday games. Jack Buck and Carl Erskine were the lead announcing crew for this series, which lasted one season. ABC typically did three games a week. Two of the games were always from the Eastern or Central Time Zone. The late games were usually San Francisco Giants or Los Angeles Dodgers' home games. However, the Milwaukee Braves used to start many of their Saturday home games late in the afternoon. So if the Giants and Dodgers were both the road at the same time, ABC still would be able to show a late game.