Rinaldo

You mean, because it's so enthralling, it's permanently burned into memory? 😉 I love this movie, and even though I own the Criterion DVD, I'll watch it any time TCM shows it. There isn't another quite like it, and it must have seemed especially startling on first release, with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis revealing new sides of their skills. I still smile to recall the character in Diner who spoke only in quotations from Sweet Smell of Success. Yep (OK, I admit I didn't know about William Shatner; he wasn't a big name at the time it was made). It got lots of publicity on first release, and I heard about it before I knew much, if anything, about Rashomon. But I was young and foolish then.

I've seen Spring and Port Wine (decades ago, and I also read William Goldman's chapter about its source play in The Season), and that's actually an excellent synopsis, of the type that describes the setup and the inciting incident, leaving later details to the actual viewing. The herring business is actually a major element that extends through the whole story, which says something about the kind of narrative it is. It's one of those very mild English comedy-dramas (in this case about generational conflict within a family whose adult children are still living with their parents) that really don't export well. I'm a pretty dedicated Anglophile, and it was too rarefied and plotless (and, on a mundane level, unbelievable) even for me. I'm sure I missed all kinds of minute social and regional cues that a UK viewer would understand. But of course other viewers will have different reactions, and should decide for themselves.

We can see a glimpse of Eileen Heckart as Rosemary Sydney in the live performance on Ed Sullivan, the role which went to Rosalind Russell in the movie (at which she was naturally disappointed, but of course RR was a star and she wasn't). But decades later, Heckart won a Supporting Actress Oscar for Butterflies Are Free, and when she was making the rounds at the after-party, she encountered Russell, who had been given the Humanitarian Award that evening. As Luke Yankee tells the story in his book about his mother Eileen Heckart:

The version I read (I too can't recall where) is that Holden realized only after filming began that he was too old. Various compromises were made in the casting and adaptation of William Inge's play, and I don't think the result really works, though it was a commercial success in its time. Amazingly, a short scene from the original play was performed on the Ed Sullivan and has been preserved. It features Ralph Meeker and Janice Rule, and Eileen Heckart as the schoolteacher (the clip was posted by Heckart's son, Luke Yankee). Despite the artificiality of the situation (performing a scene out of context, for a TV audience) and despite Meeker really not being much younger than Holden (though I think he carries it off better), I find that the sad uncomfortable undercurrents are all there: There's also a 1986 taping of a stage production, starring Gregory Harrison and Jennifer Jason Leigh, that I think in some (not all) ways works very well. Here I'm in agreement. I adore a great deal of Preston Sturges's work but not Sullivan's Travels. It's one of the surprisingly large genre of movies that aim to tell me "there's honor and value in giving the world frivolous things, like comedies." And my grumpy attitude is always "I knew that coming in, it's obvious. You would have spent your time and my time better by making something that was actually entertaining, and skip the banal didactic lessons."

Essential as always, here is the Broadway by Ghostlight breakdown of Episode 6: If Doug Besterman says he intended a "Being Alive" reference with Kratt's interrupted song, he would know, and I absolutely accept that. But its introductory vamp had a little something of Anthony's version of "Johanna" in it, too, to my ears.

Do we know that there will be a Season 3? This ending could easily serve as a series finale.

That's the general principle, all right, but I've been dismayed on occasion to find that it doesn't always apply. Like, when Candice Bergen sang badly on purpose in Starting Over (and occasionally on Murphy Brown)... that was really the best she could do.

That, and opening with Dreamgirls (1981).

Well, so much for my theory that the "I'll drink to that!" lady would turn out to be Dooley's wife / Jenny's mother, secretly alive after all. I really thought they were preparing for that, with her only being heard at a distance when Dooley went to the nice restaurant (so he wouldn't have seen her there) and him generally staying in a different neighborhood of Schmicago. At least the "Melissa learns to accept imperfect rhymes" theory didn't pan out either. Accepting imperfection in life is one thing, but approximate rhymes are the work of the devil. 😉 "Dreamgirls" was obvious, and I got a Kander/Ebb vibe from one moment, but mostly the songs didn't seem to me to have clear models. I'll look forward to learning more from those more expert.

As with so many Academy Awards over the years, it was likely a matter of which movie seemed more Worthy to the voters. To choose Patton over Woodstock was to choose solid American values over those filthy naked hippies. That reminds me of the girls sitting behind me at Blazing Saddles when it was new. When Madeline Kahn began her devastating impression of Marlene Dietrich's vocalism in "I'm tired," one of them muttered, "Ew, she doesn't have a very good voice, does she?"

Thanks, @Chippings, but there are certainly vast areas here where I look to be informed by others -- I never got to know Godspell, and my Andrew Lloyd Webber knowledge is minimal (I did see Evita and Phantom of the Opera, and like one song from the latter). With Sondheim, my interest is both personal and professional (I taught History of American Musicals for years, and I've seen most of his shows in multiple productions over the years). It's fun that there are so many analyses of the episodes online, but some sites are more impressionistic than precise. The YouTube "Ghostlight" channel is usually excellent, and I've learned from it. As for Promises, Promises, there really doesn't seem to be an exact model for the Jaime-Ann song in its score (though the sound is total Bacharach), but here's the number in the show that's a duet at a bar, which I'm linking because I love the rendition by Christine Baranski and Martin Short from the semi-staged Encores! production:

"There's Always a Twist" is dead-on Promises, Promises, even if we can't pin it down to a specific song; and that show has female back-up vocals throughout (there was a quartet singing from the pit), as part of that distinctive Bacharach sound. And the trio here actually reproduces some effects from that show, especially a riff from the title song. So I think we need look no further. (Little Shop muddies the waters, being a 1982 spoof of the very pop sounds for which Bacharach invented his own hyper-stylized version. We've already had the Company female trio in the first episode. And there is no such ensemble in Follies -- I wish there were, because I'd love to see them refer to Follies, my favorite musical and one I've been researching for years.)

It's so easy for people, in all sincerity, to misremember what they're told if it's not what they wanted to hear. I truly can't picture a casting person, at this historical moment, telling an actress flat-out "You're too old." (There are and have always been so many ways to not cast someone without getting oneself in trouble.) I can, possibly, see someone responding with something like "We've filled all the main female roles with the people carried over from last season; the only open parts with lines are the leaders of the flower children, and those are too small for someone of your stature plus they need to be fairly young" and her hearing it as a flat "You're too old." Or maybe I'm all wrong.

That's the best-known song from the show, but I just don't hear any resemblance in lyrics, music, or situation. I'm open to instruction on the matter, though. Yes, of course it's a quote from that song, and we're to recognize it as such, along with the situation of a drunken lady in a bar. Patti LuPone is only one in a long line of famous Joannes, though (starting with Elaine Stritch and culminating in the trio of Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep, and Audra McDonald for Sondheim's birthday). If anybody specifically is being referenced, I'd venture that it's Stritch, with her famous devotion to the bottle and her preservation on that documentary about the original cast recording.

I have a thought about her. But I'll keep it to myself until next week. I loved that ensemble, by the way. A "finaletto" drawing the characters together, such as was common through the 1930s and 40s and still occasionally to be found in this period. How To Succeed has one, A Little Night Music has perhaps more than one, Sweeney Todd has its elopement quartet, and no doubt there are other examples. (Les Mis ends its first act with one, but that's out of period for this season.)

Yes, I could believe that duet at the bar was an actual Bacharach/David song , every nuance was right. But was it referring to one particular number from Promises, Promises? I kept trying to pin it down and couldn't.

Maybe so, especially when the newest episode has a line stressing his youth. I prefer to think of this as a knowing nod at the way most portrayers of Berger in Hair seem to be a little old for the role of leader of the flower children -- Gerome Ragni was 33 in the original Broadway cast, Will Swenson was 36 in the revival, and Treat Williams a mere lad at 27 for the movie.

My apologies, I can see how that came off in a way I didn't intend. All I meant was that, instead of a report of someone else's reaction, I'd rather know what all the excellent participants here (you included) think. I've had one response already that has given me something to think about, and I'm always glad to learn more.

Plus a re-enactment of "Rich Man's Frug," of all unexpected and wonderful things.

@lovett1979, I very much appreciate the detailed, thoughtful response to my musical question. I'll refer to it while I rewatch that episode, and will hope to see (hear?) the light.

I don't care what Kristin Chenoweth thought, I'm looking for elements that can be described. The harmony, or its voicing, or how it moves? The melody (I sure can't analyze any resemblance there, but maybe I've missed something)? The rhythm? There has to be something, preferably multiple things. The Oklahoma! situation you mention is different: The Season 1 theme is openly modeled on the beginning of the Oklahoma! overture (not just at the National Theatre, it was created by Robert Russell Bennett for the original production and used ever since) in multiple ways: the trill at the start, the move to separately articulated 16th notes and much of their actual pitch motion, the sharp brass rhythm under that... there are multiple details to point out, and they're clearly meant to be obvious.

People keep saying this, but (honest question) where's the resemblance? I adore "Sunday," but a chorus singing quietly in unison isn't enough to evoke it for me. It was more obvious at the top of episode 4, when she added the white hat, but I was most reminded of Barbra Streisand's present-day clothes in the 1972 movie of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Like this one:

We don't know their parental status. Given the lack of defenses against disease, I imagine a fair percentage of early Victorian Londoners were orphans. Be that as it may, I don't see non-orphans as more pardonable objects of murder than orphans. 😄

Nope, he started out with that intent, but he moved on just offing random people.

Yes, I wasn't getting any specific references from this duet either (and therefore wondered what others thought), and though the situation brought Pippin's "Love Song" to mind, the music/lyric details didn't. On the whole it feels like Cinco Paul's try for an extractable song that can stand on its own merits for Season 2 (as "Suddenly" was -- successfully, to my mind -- in Season 1). Still within the period style, but its own thing, not a parody or paraphrase.