Patricia Hammerlee

New Faces was a musical revue with songs and comedy skits tied together by a quirky plot. It ran on Broadway for nearly a year in 1952 and was then made into a motion picture in 1954. It helped jump start the careers of several young performers including Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostley, Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence, performer/writer Mel Brooks (as Melvin Brooks), and lyricist Sheldon Harnick. The film was basically a reproduction of the stage revue with a thin plot added. The plot involved a producer and performer (Ronny Graham) in financial trouble and is trying to stave off an angry creditor long enough to open his show. A wealthy Texan offers to help out, on the condition that his daughter be in the show.

In 1956, BLOOMER GIRL was presented in a live television production starring the magnificent Barbara Cook, whose star was then on the rise, with leading roles in CANDIDE and THE MUSIC MAN still in her future. A solid success when it opened on Broadway in 1944, BLOOMER GIRL boasts a glorious score by the legendary team of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg (THE WIZARD OF OZ). The book by Fred Saidy is set at the brink of the Civil War and addresses issues of women's equality (priorities were the right to vote and to wear bloomers, a liberating alternative to hoop skirts) and racial equality.