Original Cast Album: Company (1970) on Netflix
NR197058mDocumentary
Company has just opened on Broadway, and tradition schedules its original cast album for the Sunday after opening night. Sondheim and the cast gather for a marathon recording session.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb8.0/101,318 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Featurette
Plot summary
On May 3, 1970, the company of Stephen Sondheim's Company, then running on Broadway, gathered at Columbia Records' 30th Street studio in Manhattan with a large pit orchestra to record the original cast album, which Broadway tradition schedules for the Sunday after opening night. The producers had first planned the filming as a pilot for a television series about the making of cast recordings, and four cameras shot about twenty hours of film. Songs including Another Hundred People, Getting Married Today and Being Alive were recorded with a live orchestra in repeated takes through a marathon session that pushed everyone involved to the limit.
Cast
- Steve Elmoreas Himself (Paul)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Original Cast Album: Company (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Eastern Airlines watched the second-night Company performance on 27 April and then withdrew its financial underwriting, five days before filming, uneasy about the stewardess character April: not so much that she slept with Bobby, but that she missed her flight. Chrysler agreed to sponsor less than 48 hours before the session.
- Elaine Stritch was called at noon, but did not begin her “Ladies Who Lunch” solo until well after midnight, and the cameras caught her unsuccessful takes. Producer Thomas Z. Shepard suggested the orchestra record the accompaniment without her so she could return another day, well-rested, to add her singing.
- The new musicals Coco and Applause had been considered for the documentary, but they were passed over on the assumption that the leading ladies, Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall, would not be prepared to be photographed without Hollywood make-up.
- The film is the basis for the parody Original Cast Album: Co-Op, an episode of the Emmy Award-nominated mockumentary series Documentary Now, depicting the cast album recording session for a 1970s musical about a New York City apartment cooperative.
