"Piscator was a seminal influence on Bertolt Brecht, whose “The Threepenny Opera” with Kurt Weill occasioned Arthur’s breakthrough, when she was cast as Lucy Brown in the heralded 1954 off-Broadway production with Lotte Lenya. Arthur, by this time, had already been performing regularly, thanks to a theater culture that knew a good bass-baritone voice and imposing build when it saw them."
Hot on the heels of his record-breaking Hello, Dolly!, composer Jerry Herman returned to Broadway with another blockbuster, Mame, which opened to rave reviews at the Winter Garden on May 24, 1966. Based on the novel by Patrick Dennis and the play Auntie Mame by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the musical was, in a very real sense, “presold.” It featured a grander-than-life charismatic heroine, a real riches-to-rags-to-riches life story, and a rousing score by one of Broadway’s newest wunderkinds. And it had a star of the first magnitude in Angela Lansbury who appropriated the role and made it her own, even though it had been identified before with the great Rosalind Russell. Mame was nominated for the Tony® for best musical that year and enjoyed a long run of 1,508 performances. First LP release: June 3, 1966
Jason B. Schmidt 