1. “Free” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. About half the songs from the stage musical didn’t make it into Richard Lester’s film version, but this is the most maddening omission. Zero Mostel says the word, then seems about to sing it, but the scene quick-cuts to something else entirely. Could it be that Richard Lester, like great comedy director George S. Kaufman before him, just didn’t like musicals? He seemed to be able to make room for Beatles songs in Hard Day’s Night and Help.

2. “My Blanket and Me” from You’ re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. The animated TV version of the musical is only an hour long, and tends to go for the ensemble tunes (like “Glee Club Rehearsal,” a number which didn’t even make the original Off Broadway soundtrack album). But I can’t help wondering what might have been done with this wonderful Linus solo. It has the same dramatic usefulness as Hysterium’s “I’m Calm” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”—which of course was cut from Forum’s film version.

3. “The Madison”, aka “The Madison Time” from Hairspray. The only song from John Water’s original 1988 Hairspray film to make it into the 2002 Broadway musical adaptation. In the Waters film it’s a record by the Philadephia-based Ray Bryant combo. Bryant just died this past June.

4.”The Long Grift” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. “Look what you’ve done, you gigolo…” The only song in the stage show sung by a member of the backing band rather than Hedwig herself or her sideman Ytzhak, it provides a perfectfully timed respite and fresh perspective mid-show. It’s my favorite song in a show full of great rock songs, and I was devastated when only a few notes of it are heard in the movie. It was especially galling because the film was adapted and directed and scored by the same duo who’d devised the original, John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. I was able to ask Trask (who sang it in the original Jane St. Theater production) about it, and he had several explanations for why “The Long Grift” wouldn’t work on screen. It’s true that the film has many more voices and characters in it than the stage version, so the thrill of a new one is gone. But, really, what a beautiful song.

5. “Coffee Break” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. No, it doesn’t further the plot, and it could apply to any musical about any office ever. But they weren’t doing musicals about offices in the 1950s and ‘60s, and this song really set the scene for the entire enterprise. It’s kind of an Act One coffee break in itself, a chance to enjoy the already frenetic pace with a little caffeine boost. It’s a crucial number in a show where even the love duets are shouty and frazzled; what drug are these people on? Coffee.

For the uninitiated, these questions emanate from a pub quiz which the wonderful Lou Harry of the Indianapolis Business News put together one night for a bunch of theater journalists who were in L.A. as part of an NEA/Annenberg fellowship in June. Good fun!

Round Four: Theater Math
1. The number of Angry Men plus the musical based on Fellini’s 8 ½.
2. The number of Men in a Boat divided by a song from A Chorus Line.
3. The number used twice in the title of a musical which starred Danny Kaye, times the number of girls used twice in a Kander & Ebb title.
4. A Jason Robert Brown musical, minus the number in the title of a musical which starred Tommy Tune.
5. Number of Frenchmen in the Cole Porter musical plus the number of Hoods with Robin in the upcoming Rat Pack-related musical.

Round Five: Roots
Name the book, play or opera on which each of these shows was based. (Some may have more than one source.)
1. Crazy for You
2. Timbuktu!
3. Play On
4. Mame
5. Rent
6. Angel
7. South Pacific
8. Cabaret
9. Sugar
10. Lestat

Round Six: Who Wrote…
1. The play You Never Can Tell
2. The book The Season
3. The play Crimes of the Heart
4. The book for Fiddler on the Roof
5. The lyrics for City of Angels
6. The music for The Goodbye Girl
7. The theme song for The Nanny
8. The play The Mercy Seat
9. The play Uncommon Women and Others
10. The music for The Capeman

Round Seven: Lyrics
Name the show from which these quotes come.
1. “Oh, it’s time to start livin’”
2. “It was the music of something beginning.”
3. “Joey, Joey, Joey. You’ve been too long in one place.”
4. “I’m quick on the trigger with targets not much bigger.”
5. “Don’t you carry nothin’ that might be a load.”
6. “I’m gonna be a mighty being, so enemies beware”
7. “Prepare ye the way of the lord.”
8. “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match.”
9. “Where is love?”
10. “Everyone’s a little bit…”

1. Oliver!
2. The Point
3. Grease
4. Pippin
5. The Prison
6. Vince Fontaine in Grease
7. Television Parts
8. The Uncle Floyd Show
9. “To Be Or Not to Be.”
10. Bugsy Malone
11. Fagin.
12. Videoranch 3D
13. Broadway Micky

This also helps answer the question of whether, if you lock a bunch of Monkees in a room with typewriters, they’ll create Shakespeare.

1. Davy Jones was in the original Broadway cast of this Dickens-based musical. (The cast appeared on the same Feb. 9, 1964 telecast of the Ed Sullivan show as the Beatles.)
2. David Jones and Micky Dolenz co-starred in the London premier of this stage musical adapted from a Harry Nilsson TV special.
3. Davy Jones was Vince Fontaine in the first national tour of the 1994 Broadway revival of this 1970s Off Broadway sensation.
4. Micky Dolenz co-starred in a regional revival of Stephen Schwartz’s regal anti- war musical at the Goodspeed opera house.
5. As the first major project of his Pacific Arts production company, Michael Nesmith released this “book with a soundtrack”—not quite a musical, but more than a concept album.
6. Micky Dolenz played. the same role as Davy Jones once had in a national tour of this Broadway musical.
7. Michael Nesmith taped stand-up performances by L.A.-based comics for this NBC series based on his earlier clip anthology Elephant Parts.
8. Peter Tork was one of the first celebrities to take part in comedy sketches on this long-running New Jersey-based vaudevillian variety show, ostensibly for children, hosted by Floyd Vivino.
9. Micky Dolenz had a solo 45 based on the works of William Shakespeare.
10. Among Micky Dolenz’s stage directing credits is the London premiere of the live adaptation of this Alan Parker gangster film.
11. Davy Jones returned to the musical in which he’d first achieved stardom, in a different, much older and even more villainous role.
12. Michael Nesmith’s current project involves real-time live performances streamed online under this title.
13. Micky Dolenz did an entire album of Broadway showtunes.

Answers in a future post.

ROUND ONE: WARM-UPS
1. Puckering musicals: Anyone Can Whistle and Whistle Down the Wind.
2. In the order in which they were produced: Oklahoma, Carousel, The King & I, Me & Juliet, The Sound of Music
3. Mama Roses: Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone.
4. Short runs on the jukebox: Good Vibrations: 94 performances, 50 previews. Ring of Fire (The Johnny Cash Musical Show): 57 performances, 38 previews. The Times They Are A-Changin’: 28 performances, 35 previews.
5. The Amish musical: Plain and Fancy by Joseph Stein, Will Glickman, Arnold B. Horwitt and Albert Hague.
6. The other Broadway superhero: It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman.

ROUND TWO: Hot Shows
1. The Water Engine
2. Smoke on the Mountain
3. Pretty Fire
4. The Hot L Baltimore
5. Burn This
6. The Matchmaker
7. Blazing Saddles
8. Red Hot & Blue

ROUND THREE: Replacements
(Note for purists: In some cases, the “replacements” did not immediately follow the original stars in the same roles.)
1. Verdon leads to Minnelli: Chicago
2. Merman leads to Bailey: Hello Dolly
3. Parker follows McArdle: Annie
4. Julia in for Langella: Dracula (the Edward Gorey one).
5. Stritch follows Lansbury: A Little Night Music
6. Kaczmarek for Ruhl: Lost in Yonkers.
7. Hopkins from Perkins: Equus.
8. Lane to Goldberg: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
9. Williams after Rivera: Kiss of the Spider Woman.
10. Stamos does Banderas: Nine.

This L.A. throng was something else—a fantasyland of like-minded passionate professionals.

The ultimate example of how this odd community, which sprang up for 10 days in L.A., shared and cared? The Pub Trivia contest thrown together by Lou Harry of the Indianapolis Business Journal. This was a late-night gathering held after a long day of sightseeing on one of our last nights in town, yet 15 or 16 of the 21 NEA/Annenberg fellows turned out to play.

Lou gave me permission to reprint his questions here. I had to transcribe from his reporter’s notebook—in which he’d scrawled questions on the fly in the scant moments amid our whirlwind sched of fellowship events and obligations. So if there are mistakes here, blame the editor (me):

ROUND ONE: Warm-ups

1. Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber have each done musical with titles that involve puckering. Name them.

2. Place these Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals in the order in which they were first produced:
Carousel
Oklahoma
The Sound of Music
The King & I
Me & Juliet

3. Name four women who played Mama Rose on Broadway.

4. Which of these jukebox musicals had the longest run?
The Times They Are A-Changin’
Ring of Fire
Good Vibrations

5. Name Broadway’s Amish musical. Hint: A revival has been playing in Nappanee, Indiana since 1986.

6. There was a superhero musical long before Spider-Man, in 1966. Give its full title.

ROUND TWO: Hot Shows

“Hot” Shows:
1. A David Mamet drama about a machine that runs without gas.
2. Musical about a gospel-singing church family.
3. Charlaine Woodard one-hander.
4. 1973 Lanford Wilson play.
5. 1986 Lanford Wilson play.
6. Thornton Wilder play adapted into a popular musical.
7. Rumored to be the next Mel Brooks film to get the Broadway treatment.
8. Cole Porter musical starring Jimmy Durante, Ethel Merman and Bob Hope.

ROUND THREE: Replacements.

Name the Broadway shows which had…
1. Liza Minnelli replacing Gwen Verdon.
2. Pearl Bailey replacing Ethel Merman.
3. Sarah Jessica Parker replacing Andrea McArdle.
4. Raul Julia replacing Frank Langella.
5. Elaine Stritch replacing Angela Lansbury.
6. Jane Kaczmarek replacing Mercedes Ruhl.
7. Anthony Hopkins replacing Anthony Perkins.
8. Whoopi Goldberg replacing Nathan Lane.
9. Vanessa Williams replacing Chita Rivera.
10. John Stamos replacing Antonio Banderas.

Answers in a future post, plus more questions.
You can easily look this stuff up online. What I really want to convey is how much fun we critics all had in L.A.