Do Re Mi

Philadelphia, PA: Philip Trachtman, Theatrical Publications, 1962. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus [presumably for a Summer Stock tour]. Wraps. Good. Philip Trachtman (cover). 12 pages, plus covers. Illustrations (some color inside). This production was staged and directed by Richard Barstow. A rare item of Peggy Cass stage and musical career. The principal performers were: Peggy Cass, Jerry Lester, Judy Foster, Joel Schaub, Harold Gary, Irv Harmon, Al Henderson, and Barney Martin. Perhaps the best known song from this show is Make Someone Happy. This program includes The History of the Show. In addition to narratives on the producers, director, choreographer, musical director, and production designer, there is a synopsis of the show. The last page and inside the back cover are photographs of the General Manager, Lighting Director, and a very large ensemble cast. Do Re Mi is a musical with music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and a book by Garson Kanin, who also directed the original 1960 Broadway production. The plot centers on a minor-league con man who decides to go (somewhat) straight by moving into the legitimate business of juke boxes and music promotion. The musical was notable for its elaborate scenic design by Boris Aronson, who conceived the set as an enormous pop-art jukebox, and used extremely novel forms such as collage in his design. The curtain of juke boxes "evoked a cathedral's stained-glass effect." This production may have toured: Valley Forge Music Fair, Devon, Pa; Camden County Music Fair, Haddonfield, NJ; Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, L.I.; Storrowton Music Fair, West Springfield, Mass.; Painters Mill Music Fair, Owings Mills, Md.; and Shady Grove Music Fair, Gaithersburg, Md. Mary Margaret "Peggy" Cass (May 21, 1924 - March 8, 1999) was an American actress, comedian, game show panelist, and announcer. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture for her performance in the 1958 film Auntie Mame. Cass made her Broadway debut in 1949 with the play Touch and Go. Remembered today primarily as a regular panelist on the long-running To Tell the Truth, she played Agnes Gooch in Auntie Mame on Broadway and in the film version (1958), a role for which she won the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress, and later received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was cast as "First Woman" in the nine-member ensemble for the 1960 Broadway revue A Thurber Carnival, adapted by James Thurber from his own works. She played several characters throughout the performance including: the mother in "The Wolf at the Door", the narrator of "The Little Girl and the Wolf", a nameless American tourist (who insisted Macbeth was a murder mystery), Miss Alma Winege in "File and Forget" (who wanted to ship Mr. Thurber 36 copies of Grandma Was a Nudist which he did not order), Mrs. Preble in "Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife", Lou in "Take Her Up Tenderly" (who was helping make old poetry more cheerful), and Walter Mitty's wife. In 1961, she played Mitzi Stewart in the movie Gidget Goes Hawaiian. In 1964, she starred as First Lady Martha Dinwiddie Butterfield in the mock-biographical novel First Lady: My Thirty Days in the White House. The book, written by Auntie Mame author Patrick Dennis, included photographs by Cris Alexander of Cass, Dody Goodman, Kaye Ballard and others who portrayed the novel's characters. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she succeeded other actresses in Don't Drink the Water (as Marion Hollander) and in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite as well as played Mollie Malloy in two revival runs of The Front Page. She also appeared in the 1969 film comedy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. In the 1980s, she returned to the stage in 42nd Street and in the 1985 run of The Octette Bridge Club. Jerry Lester (born Lester J. Goldberg; February 16, 1910 - March 23, 1995) was an American comedian, singer and performer on radio, television and the stage, knows for playing the father of the main characters, Mike Firpo, in the comedy Odds and Evens and who hosted the first network late night television program as host of Broadway Open House on NBC, a vaudeville-esque combination of comedy and music, whose success demonstrated the potential for late-night television and led to the creation of the Tonight Show. Following his graduation from Northwestern University, he performed nationally in music halls and nightclubs, going on to appear in vaudeville, several Broadway musicals including Beat the Band and Jackpot, and Hollywood films in the 1940s, as well as being a performer on radio. Lester returned to prominence in theatre in the 1960s, appearing in the lead role of slave Pseudolus in the road production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, subsequently replacing Zero Mostel on Broadway, and playing Seabee in the 1969 production of South Pacific. In the ensemble cast is Phyllis Ford, believed to later becoming Phyllis Ford Frick, an accomplished performer and sometime associate of Frank Sinatra.