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| re: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) | |
| Posted by: Guillaume 12:29 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
| In reply to: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) - bobby2 11:45 pm EDT 03/20/22 | |
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| Loudon gave a really wonderful performance that showed she was not just a comic but an actress; the vulnerability Michael Bennett got out of her was amazing and he found unexpected moments to quickly show and hide it that made your heart ache. Alexis Smith got nominated because she was Alexis Smith - her non-role and non-show were besides the point. Tovah Feldshuh gave a one note performance as a sex pot; she served it up with brio. Lucie gave a one and half note performance as a type we were expected to love just because she was coocoo and the one or two supposedly "honest" moments spackled into the script could not be taken seriously because the entire show was pitched with a "Three's Company" School of Dramatic Arts style so we were in sitcom land so who cared. Still, Lucie should have been given the nomination over Feldshuh because Lucie had a lot more material to deliver along with having to grin and bear Robert Klein's nonstop mugging and garbage disposal vocals on his songs. For the fourth Tony nomination I'd have given it to Georgia Brown in Carmelina, who was offbeat funny in a here's my warts and all way, but I suspect they didn't want four middle aged actresses up in front of the cameras when production numbers were shown, and Lansbury and Loudon definitely needed to be honored and Smith is sexier than Brown, so bye bye Brown and let's get one of the younger ladies on camera; and Felshuh looked terrific in those dresses shaking her maracas. | |
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| re: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 11:26 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 11:25 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
| In reply to: re: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) - Guillaume 12:29 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
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| I saw all of those shows -- my first year in NYC -- including Carmelina (though at the Kennedy Center; ditto, Platinum). Okay, except Sarava! To state the obvious: would the Lansbury Lovett have lost to anyone, any year? Even at the time, the performance seemed for the ages, unlike anything we'd seen. It remains definitive, despite some wonderful subsequent work (including Loudon in the same role, which I much appreciated). Maybe they further fixed Platinum, but in DC it was notable only for the improved Smith singing -- she made great strides post Follies, and I'm not putting down that vocal performance -- and Richard Cox, nude. It was a silly show, and Smith looked elegant and pulled off its songs with great confidence. A strange nomination, when you put it next to Arnaz's triple threat work in Song. For what it's worth, I don't believe there's any "they" parsing such matters as putting middle aged actresses on camera. They just voted, and those performances came out the nominees. Sorry, it's perverse logic to imagine a professional Tony discussion around the age of performers on the telecast. |
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| re: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) | |
| Posted by: bobby2 02:56 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
| In reply to: re: 1979 Best Actress Tony Award (Angela Lansbury) - Guillaume 12:29 am EDT 03/21/22 | |
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| I so wish I could have seen Loudon in Ballroom. She's stellar in that Tony performance. I saw her in Jerry's Girls as a kid but that was just the antic comic Dorothy. I guess Ballroom was really the only time she did drama (?) except for Sweeney. What about the featured performances that year. So many from flop shows while Sweeney got none. I think nowadays Sweeney's whole cast would have filled out the categories. The New York Times hated Richard Cox in Platnum yet he got in over Ken Jennings and the other Sweeney men. |
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