Bedford Playhouse Kicks Off 75th Anniversary Year on April 8th

It was 75 years ago that the Bedford Playhouse theater first opened its doors. Kicking off its “75th Anniversary Weekend,” the Playhouse will present the award-winning “An American in Paris,” now fully restored to its original glory, and hold a panel discussion afterwards with Janet Maslin, former film critic at The New York Times, and Bob Harris, nationally-renowned film restorer. A Parisian cocktail reception starts things off at 6:30 pm on Friday, April 8th. The weekend also features“Playhouse LIVE: An Evening with Medium Thomas John” on Saturday, April 9th, and on Sunday, April 10, “Broadway Behind the Curtain” with legendary Broadway producer Fran Weissler in an evening of song performed by “Chicago” star Amra-Faye Wright (vocal) and Rob Bowman (piano).

Please visit bedfordplayhouse.org for further information and tickets. Tickets for “An American in Paris” are $75 per ticket (regular) and $94.47 (Premium); the reception and panel discussion are included in the ticket price.

Sweeping the 1952 Academy Awards with six Oscars, “An American in Paris” is a tour de force: an all-star cast, sensational music and dance, and is directed by an industry legend. The plot, based on “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw, revolves around the adventures of Jerry Mulligan, an American ex-GI (Gene Kelly) who stays in post-war Paris to become a painter. There, he falls for the gamine charms of Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron). However, his paintings come to the attention of Milo Roberts (Nina Foch), a rich American heiress, who is interested in more than just the art. Complications ensue and Jerry’s friend Adam Cook (Oscar Levant) tries to offer his best advice. Pair that with great melodies – music by George Gershwin, lyrics by his brother Ira; great dance (Oh, that 18-minute ballet sequence!); a great city, as in if you want to fall in love, make a bee-line to Paris; and Oscar Levant’s great wit, and you’ve got a winner. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli; script by Alan Jay Lerner.

This 1951 version of “An American in Paris” has been beautifully restored, with the result that the film’s bright color radiates even more on Bedford Playhouse’s big 36-foot screen – the largest in Westchester. And you'll enjoy the music even more with our state-of-the art Dolby Atmos surround sound technology, allowing listeners to hear specific sounds from any direction the soundtrack creator intended. It all adds up to a great cinematic experience!

"Pygmalion" attacked the British class system, here embodied by the character Henry Higgins, an upper-class linguist, who engineers flower girl Eliza Doolittle's escape from the lower classes, and upends the snobbish belief that an Englishman's destiny was largely determined by his accent (!) and that "superiority" was inherited, not earned. Bob Harris, who restored "My Fair Lady" in 1993, says that this was apparently the first musical to use any form of live recording of the music, “although only of Mr. Harrison, who refused to mouth playbacks. His early model wireless microphone can be seen as a rather inflated tie during his musical numbers." Harrison's lips are therefore always in perfect sync, as opposed to everyone else’s in the film.

Why is film restoration so critical? "By preserving film, we save history and an art form," said Harris. During the 1980s, it became apparent that the collections of motion picture heritage were at risk of becoming lost. Created on perishable plastic, film decays within a few years if it is not properly restored. By rescuing decaying film stock, we preserve the wonderful images they contain, so the film can be shared with the public. It is estimated that 90 percent of all American silent films made before 1920, and 50 percent of American sound film made before 1950 had been lost. In 1980, UNESCO officially recognized “moving images” as an integral part of the world’s cultural heritage. According to Bob Harris, the greatest threat to film, however, was intentional destruction.

“Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios,” notes Bob Harris. “There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house.” The cause for film preservation came to the forefront in the 1980s and early 1990s when influential film directors Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese got involved. Scorsese created The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, in 1990. By working in partnership with the leading film archives and studios, The Film Foundation has saved nearly 600 films, often restoring them to pristine condition.