Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There is a sweet, earnest chat with dozens of New York stage performers from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Many of these names and faces are known by today's audiences, if at all, as fixtures on TV game shows and talk shows: consider Kitty Carlisle Hart, Charles Nelson Reilly, or Phyllis Newman. Director Rick McKay takes a no-budget approach to camera movement, his library of clips to tie segments together is uneven, and his voiceover sometimes cloys.

But, ah, to hear professionals warmly praise one of their own! Marlon Brando, Laurette Taylor (unknown outside of the stage, for she did no sound films), and Kim Stanley are singled out. Stanley is the big surprise (to me); a kinescope of her performance as Cherie in Bus Stop shows that character to be a real person, and funny to boot.

Truth to tell, all of the stories these players have to tell are good-spirited. The closest thing to dishing that we hear is scrappy Gretchen Wyler's story of understudying (then playing) the lead role in Silk Stockings.

This is a small marvel of under-the-radar filmmaking that took five years to film by McKay, who brings together interviews with several stars who are no longer with us, among them Uta Hagen, Hume Cronyn, and Adolph Green. "Law & Order" fans will fancy the segments with Jerry Orbach, song and dance man who created the role of El Gallo in The Fantasticks, back in the days (as one interviewee says) when theater was "live, and unmiked."

posted: 4:11:16 PM