“Sylvia Fine Produces Television Special”
The Virgin Islands Daily News – Sep. 29, 1979
NEW YORK – (WNS) – She was a shy, dark-
The summer screening of “Musical Comedy Tonight,” a television show brought out a gasp of celebrities including Henry Kissinger. She wrote and produced it and, along with a dazzle of stars, performs in it. When PBS airs it on Oct. 1, America will experience a promising new singing team, Rock Hudson and Ethel Merman.
“They do Cole Porter’s ‘You’re the Top,’ and they’re adorable,” she said. “I loved Cole Porter. Of them all, he was the most appreciative of other people’s talents—he was such a gentleman. I wrote the lyric for a song of his but I won’t tell you which.
“He’d written it for Danny and when I heard it I just blurted out that the lyric was so dirty Danny would never do it. He asked if I would rewrite it and I said, ‘Oh sure.’ I brought it back in a couple of weeks, he read it, slapped his thigh and laughed.”
She makes Danny laugh. And he makes her laugh. But not in the kitchen. In the kitchen, he is serious.
“I’m a good cook but from the day Danny started to cook, I stopped. He is a genius cook, he has an ineffable touch. James Bear and Craig Claiborne say he cooks the best Chinese food in the country. I love his Italian food: He makes the best pasta I’ve ever had.”
The Kayes have a California house, a hotel apartment here. On the Steinway grand
were: a sharpened pencil, music by Chopin and Gershwin, a pack of Pall Malls. “I
quit smoking once, to surprise Danny. Now I think every day of quitting.” On a table
were pictures of the Kayes and their writer-
“It took two years to get the money for ‘Musical Comedy Tonight,’” she said. “With PBS you’re dealing with government agencies and they do a slow minuet. It was the most difficult and grueling thing I’ve ever done.”
She did it out of a passion for musical comedy, which led her earlier to teach a course in the subject at USC and another for Yale.
“Talent is not enough,” she said. “You have to learn your craft and the best place to learn is in the theater because an audience will tell you what’s right and what’s wrong
“If you have a passion for the theater, God help you; you’re hooked. All the years I wrote for the movies, I was writing for the theater. ‘Chorus Line’ is about passion, I think that’s why everybody loves it.”
Carol Burnett, Sandy Duncan, Bernadette Peters, Richard Chamberlain, Agnes DeMille,
John Davidson, Bobby Van and a chorus of 16 appear in “Musical Comedy Tonight.” They
do music from “Good News” (1927), “Anything Goes” (1934), “Oklahoma” (1943) and “Company”
(1970). It’s on Channel 12 Monday, 8-
“The performers were quick to respond, and most generous,” she said. “Dick Chamberlain gave up something else to do it. They all worked for a fee of live theater.”
“Choosing the musicals wasn’t easy. ‘Good News’ had mass appeal; it’s about college life and football. Cole Porter brought a new sophistication to the theater in ‘Anything Goes.’ ‘Oklahoma’ totally revolutionized musical comedy, and there was not a new turn until ‘Company’ opened.”
This will not be the last “Musical Comedy Tonight.” She plans other shows in the genre “and Danny has promised to do one of them.”