Peter Pan, 1954-present
Several e-mails about yesterday's blog link to the amazing digital version of Peter Pan up on YouTube.
"Peter Pan is a musical based on J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan and his 1911 novelization of it, Peter and Wendy. The music is mostly by Moose Charlap, with additional music by Jule Styne, and most of the lyrics were written by Carolyn Leigh, with additional lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.
"The original 1954 Broadway production, starring Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook, earned Tony Awards for both stars. It was followed by NBC telecasts of it in 1955, 1956, and 1960 with the same stars, plus rebroadcasts of the 1960 telecast thru the 1980s.The 1960 version was produced in NBC's then-new color studio in Brooklyn."
The original cast album on RCA Victor has sold tens of millions of copies. The VHS/Beta releases thru decades, then a generation of DVDs, allowed Mary Martin to live 30 years in Brazil, and Cyril Ritchard a very worry-free retirement.
A dozen editions of the telecast exist on amazon.com, from the earliest original kinescope--the 1955 black-and-white original many watched as kids--to remastered dvds of the 1960 color show, each slightly better technically then the offering before.
The version in the link is remarkable. This is a 60-year-old videotape: how can it look and sound this way?
Obviously, like many archival gems on YouTube, uploaded by somebody who worked somewhere who sometime had access to the original NBC archive.
If you read the YouTube comments, this is a much-loved artifact of many, many people's childhood.
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