Night of 100 Stars

I still have all three tapes. The first in 1982, was the best. Actually 200 Stars appeared, each one was numbered on the screen at the time on stage. Best scenes, as they lit each candle on the birthday cake, a star would appear and tell all that happened during each decade. Lisa Minelli singing 'New York, New York' joined by 8 members of the N.Y. Yankees. James Cagney made his appearance in a wheelchair, and broke down crying. The clothes fashion number and organ music was terrific. The show closed with the remaining male stars escorted by a rockette on stage to the music "One." The finale showed all 200 star standing together singing "Until the parade passes by."

For some reason, I still have a few images of this stuck in my head after 22 years. The fun part of remembering this piece of fluff is to simply look at the list of 100 stars and see how many of them are DEAD. It's even more fun to see some of these people you thought died years ago are actually still alive (according to IMDB). Anyway, how did they manage to get all these A,B,and C-listers together for a show with no awards? Come on, they were celebrating 100 years of the Actor's Fund? Those must have been some fantastic gift baskets they received. Also, who the heck is Phyllis Frelich? Yeah, I looked at her background, apparently she won a Tony. A Tony? What happened? Did Brett Somers call in sick at the last minute?

This was a fun program from back in the last days of three networks when there wasn't much else to watch. The very idea of getting 100 stars together for one non-awards show seemed audacious at the time.

The different stars represented the facets of actors' work: Stage, movies and television. Television actors who could sing (Nancy Dussault, Pam Dawber, and John Schneider) but no one knew they could were put into a mock take on "What's My Line?" Broadway stars belted out songs from the shows which made them big names. And movie actors...well they mostly gave speeches or did bits.

The show is full of skits and walk ons hurried so as to fit 100 stars into such a short time span. At one point they simply had actors of Christopher Reeve's ilk wearing a top hat and tails stroll across stage to hear their names announced!

There was a sequel to this show but nothing could top the pure kitsch quality of the original. They don't make'm like this anymore...and I will leave it up to you as to whether or not that is a good thing.

I taped this when it aired in 1982. We had it on tape for many years but not sure where it might be now....Our family used to put in the tape and watch it from time to time. I really wish we could obtain alot of these old tv specials, made for tv movies, etc on tape or better yet DVD...At least there is some satisfaction in knowing I'm not the only one who remembers it.