God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five and shared in its success.
Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright, lyricist and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music. Ashman has been credited as being a main driving force behind the Disney Renaissance. His work included songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Tim Rice took over to write the rest of the songs for the latter film after Ashman's death in 1991.
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) has each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), and Disenchanted (2022), among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of nineteen people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a collection of short fictional interviews written by Vonnegut and first broadcast on WNYC. The title parodies that of Vonnegut's 1965 novel God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It was published in book form in 1999.
Kilgore Trout is a fictional character created by author Kurt Vonnegut. Trout is a notably unsuccessful author of paperback science fiction novels.
Eliot Rosewater is a recurring character in the novels of American author Kurt Vonnegut. He appears throughout various novels as an alcoholic, and a philanthropist who claims to be a volunteer fireman. He runs the Rosewater Foundation, an organization created to keep the family's money in the family. He is among the few fans of the novels of Kilgore Trout.
Carolee Carmello is an American actress best known for her performances in Broadway musicals and for playing the role of Maple LaMarsh on the television series Remember WENN (1996–1998). She is a three-time Tony Award nominee and a five-time Drama Desk nominee, winning the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical for her role in Parade.
Donna Murphy is an American actress, best known for her work in musical theater. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she has twice won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical: for her role as Fosca in Passion (1994–1995) and as Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1996–1997). She was also nominated for her roles as Ruth Sherwood in Wonderful Town (2003), Lotte Lenya in LoveMusik (2007), and Bubbie/Raisel in The People in the Picture (2011).
Jane Ann "Janie" Sell is an American stage actress. She has performed in plays and musicals both on and off-Broadway, as well as in some films and television episodes.
Cheese Nips were a small cheese-flavored cracker manufactured by Mondelez International under its brand, Nabisco, they were originally used to compete against Sunshine Biscuit's Cheez-It crackers.
Little Shop of Horrors is a horror comedy rock musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics and a book by Howard Ashman. The story follows a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The musical is loosely based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. The music, composed by Menken in the style of early 1960s rock and roll, doo-wop and early Motown, includes several well-known tunes, including the title song, "Skid Row (Downtown)", "Somewhere That's Green", and "Suddenly, Seymour".
Santino Fontana is an American actor and singer. He began his career in 2006 playing Hamlet at the Guthrie Theater and soon gained wide acclaim for his leading performances on and Off-Broadway. He has received a Tony Award, two Drama Desk Awards, an Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Obie Award, and Clarence Derwent Award. In 2019, Fontana won the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his lead performance as Michael Dorsey in the stage adaptation of Tootsie.
Robert Westenberg is an American stage actor and singer, acting teacher, and professor. He received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods.
Jeff Blumenkrantz is an American actor, composer and lyricist.
Jonathan Hadary is an American actor.
Frederick D. Coffin was an American film actor, singer, songwriter, and musician.
Jim Walton is an American actor, most notable for his leading performance in the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along as Franklin Shephard.
Lorin Latarro is a Broadway Director/Choreographer whose work can be seen on Broadway, The Metropolitan Opera, and in dance companies internationally. She began her career as a dancer who performed in fourteen Broadway shows and toured with world renowned dance companies.
Howard Sings Ashman is a two-disc album compiled by PS Classics as part of their Songwriter Series. The album features Howard Ashman singing selections from his musicals, including God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979), Little Shop of Horrors (1982), Smile (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992).
Dear Worthy Editor: Letters to The Daily Forward is a 1960s or c. 1974 musical and one of the early works by Alan Menken. He collaborated with his mother to develop the musical, adapted from the Bintel Brief letters-to-the-editor published by the Yiddish-language newspaper Jewish Daily Forward. While Menken had written musicals prior to this, it became his first work to achieve a level of success, being performed many times in the Jewish-American circuit.
