My Favorite Year (1992) Promo Clips - Musical - Tim Curry - Broadway

Tim Curry starred as troubled movie star Alan Swann in the short-lived Broadway production of 'My Favorite Year' between 1992 - 1993. Despite securing Tim a Tony nomination for Best Actor, the show had its opening night on 10th December 1992 and closed just one month later on 10th January 1993 after mixed reviews.

This video, made from clips from the original 'Reviewers Reel', includes a show montage and the songs 'Manhattan', 'The Gospel According To King', 'The Musketeer Sketch Rehearsal', 'Welcome To Brooklyn' and 'The Musketeer Sketch/Finale My Favorite Year Reprise'. The cast also featured Evan Pappas, Andrea Martin and Lainie Kazan.

"The original 'My Favorite Year' was a kind of a male version of “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Gloria Swanson, faded star of silent film, played Norma Desmond, faded star of silent film. Following that lead, Peter O’Toole, notoriously debauched film idol, created Swann, notoriously debauched film idol. For someone else to assume such a role, and in a musical version besides, is an act of courage. Or madness.

“I remember when the notices appeared in the papers that this was going to be staged, I sort of cocked an eye and thought, ‘Oh no,’ ” Curry admitted. “But when it really started to get off the ground and they started calling . . . I figured out in the end that I was scared. So I came.”
Curry said that the O’Toole-Swann parallel was “one of the reasons why the film was extraordinarily moving as well as funny,” but he’s avoided the movie, which he saw when it first opened, and is intent on divorcing his Swann from O’Toole’s.

“Not that I haven’t done a lot of the same research,” Curry, 46, said with his Cheshire Cat’s smile. “But it was clear from the way the script was going that the creative team had long since abandoned the movie. And I think there are 10 crucial years here: Peter was in his mid-50s when he did it, and that’s quite different from your mid-40s. And I think the demands of the musical are a quite different thing.
“To some extent, too, there’s been a marginal attempt to tailor things in the show to what I can do, just the way, as Lainie Kazan explained, things were tailored to O’Toole in the movie.”
Kazan is reprising her film role as Belle Steinberg Carroca, mother of Benjy Stone (Evan Pappas), whose memories are the basis of “My Favorite Year.” Benjy is the junior writer on “King Kaiser’s Komedy Kavalcade,” a 1954 TV variety show modeled on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”; Swann, an Errol Flynn character, is to be a guest on the program, and Stone is ordered by Kaiser (Tom Mardirosian) to keep Swann out of trouble.

The score is by the “Once on This Island” team of Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, and the director is Ron Lagomarsino, who explained the indirect route Curry’s casting took.
“When we were searching for the right person to play this role, I actually looked at the movie of ‘Annie,’ which Tim was in, to check out Albert Finney’s performance,” Lagomarsino said. “I don’t know if this is an apocryphal story, but Finney was originally offered the role of Swann in the movie, and from what I understand when he turned it down he said, ‘This is a role for Peter O’Toole, you don’t want me.’

“The natural thing, I thought, was to start with Finney, but there was Tim. He’s on the young side for the role now, and he was even younger then, but he had all the qualities--dashing, dangerous, sly, with a great sense of style. And he really is a delight to work with. He’ll try anything and that makes it easy for me to test things and see if they’ll work. He’ll go out on a limb. And while he’s very self-deprecating he’s also very astute about what a scene or his performance needs.”
The production, both director and star agreed, is in “endless transition” as it prepares for Thursday’s opening night.

“Musicals are famous for being in a constant state of flux,” Curry said. “ ‘Send in the Clowns’ was added just two days before (“A Little Night Music”) opened. There’s nothing more daunting than a musical, but there’s also no more direct line to joy. Getting there, though, is like pushing treacle up stairs.”

Curry’s co-star Andrea Martin, who plays brassy head writer Alice Miller, remarked on Curry’s resilience. “It’s amazing how he can be given a new song--they added a new one three days ago--and do it full out, with that kind of wide open, bravura style. It shows his background, the roles he’s performed before.

“We talked about the confidence that you need in this kind of show,” she said. “How if you’re feeling discouraged or tired, you really have to get geared up. Because doing a character like this isn’t just about talent.”
"Tim Curry's Favorite Year" - Los Angeles Times - 6th Dec 1992