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Broadcast September 16, 1968 Credits: |
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Act I
The Nearness of You
Down With Love
Love is Like A Newborn Child
Cry Me A River
Folk Monologue/Value
I Can See It
Act II
Love Is A Bore
He Touched Me
English Folk Song (A Schloon for the Gumpert)
I'm All Smiles
Marty the Martian
Natural Sounds
Second Hand Rose
People
Silent Night
Happy Days Are Here Again
A Happening in Central Park was performed and taped by video cameras on Saturday, June 17, 1967. The concert, sponsored by Rheingold Beer, and free to the public, was held in the Sheep Meadow section of New York City's Central Park. Barbra's television sponsor, Monsanto, captured the event on videotape for airing on CBS at a later date.
Barbra took a weekend off from the filming of Funny Girl to perform the concert. On Friday night, June 16th, Barbra and crew rehearsed until very late. Many photos of Barbra in which she wears a headband were taken the evening of the dress rehearsal. The cover of Barbra's Christmas Album is actually a photo from the Friday Night dress rehearsal in Central Park. On that evening she tried on different gowns and worked with hairdresser Fred Glaser on alternate hairstyles. Director Robert Scheerer also worked out some of his camera blocking at the rehearsal. He utilized seven color video cameras for the concert.
Sound engineer Phil Ramone (who has gone on to become a Grammy Award-winning music producer for some of the biggest talents in the music industry) told The Barbra Archives about his work on the Central Park concert, including how his sound cables got cut the day before:
"We had to share the microphones between the record company’s truck and our independent truck. A spotlight was brought in, and when they lowered the back elevator off the truck that was carrying it, it cut right through the cables. You’ve never seen so many engineers with soldering guns … Not just the P.A. system was in jeopardy, but the recording system was jeopardized. About 5 o’clock that afternoon, the day of the concert, we finally got most of the cables back."
To make matters worse, it rained on the day of the concert.
"I mean, it absolutely poured rain that day," Phil Ramone remembers. "So we never had a sound check with her or her band. The orchestra said, 'We can’t come out there with our violins and beautiful oboes. It’s too damp.' Around 5:30 or 6:00 they finally agreed. It had just started to dry up."
When Barbra appeared on stage that afternoon, the fans, who had made picnics and come early to get a good seat, went wild.
The stage, designed by Tom John, was very contemporary yet simple. The Plexiglass stairs made it look as if Barbra was walking on air. A 200-foot track was built in front of the stage that extended into the audience. You can see the camera on a crane during wide shots of the concert. The track was to be utilized for the final number, "Happy Days".
The concert began late, around 9:45 p.m. Conductor Mort Lindsay, wearing a set of earphones, received his prompt. Baton in hand, he cued the orchestra to begin the overture.
Barbra walked down the Plexiglass stage and spread her arms wide to accept the applause of 135,000 fans. Her first song: "Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home."
(Above) A fan's [silent] home movie of Barbra's entrance. If you watch closely you will see her sing the opening phrase, "Free and easy..."
All Star Video released an unofficial VHS tape of Barbra's Central Park television special in the 1980s. A CBS/Fox official version was first released in 1987.
An area for Barbra's friends and family was located to the right of the stage. Seated there were husband Elliott Gould, sister Rosyln Kind, Bella Abzug, Mayor Lindsay, Calvin Klein, and Andy Warhol.
The actual, live concert of A Happening in Central Park lasted 2-1/2 hours. Barbra sang many songs that, ultimately, were not included in her hour-long television special.
The concert is also partly responsible for exacerbating Barbra's well-known stage fright. In 1994, Barbra told Gene Siskel that her stage fright "started in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli War when I was doing my big concert in Central Park. There were 135,000 people there. My movie [Funny Girl] was going to be banned in Egypt. The government had said that [because Omar Sharif] was an Arab and I was a Jew, they weren't going to play any of my movies. So I was afraid that somebody might take a shot at me during the concert. So I started walking around the stage fast. And I forgot my words, which is an actor's nightmare. And that frightened me—that absolute lack of control."
Barbra forgot the words to "Value". If you look closely you can detect the edit on the TV special. (They cut to a crowd shot to cover it). Conductor Mort Lindsay actually had to call out the forgotten lyric ("A car is just a car") to Barbra. As she has said in the past about forgetting lyrics, "I was not cute."
Related Articles:
Barbra filmed an introduction to the 1986 home video version of "A Happening in Central Park".
Barbra sings "All The Things You Are"...
Other Central Park Songs Taped But Not Included in the TV Special:
- Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home
- My Honey's Lovin' Arms
- I'll Tell the Man in the Street
- More Than You Know
- All the Things You Are
- What Now My Love
- Free Again
- When the Sun Comes Out
- Where Am I Going?
- Stout Hearted Men
- I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
<< Click thumbnail to view full-size window of Barbra's set list from "Happening." Thanks to Rich Kleinberg for contributing this rarity!
copyright © 2003-2008 Matt Howe
