Friday, June 22, 2007

The Amazing Anita Morris

Anita Morris was one of the greatest and most breathtakingly beautiful women ever to grace a Broadway stage. I saw her in Nine on June 15, 1983 and will never forget her performance of a first-rate siren number called A Call from the Vatican. This bootleg video is obviously grainy, so it's going to be very hard for me to explain what it was like to see the original production of Nine, or what Tommy Tune's choreography and direction did to my brain in terms of demonstrating what musical theatre could do, and what could be done on the stage more generally.

This number is famous, too, for having been banned by CBS from being performed on the Tony Awards for being too racy. I just found this clip on YouTube, and more amazing than anything is that the fourth comment is offered by none other than Grover Dale himself, the legendary choreographer, who was also Morris' husband for 20 years and father of their child, the actor James Badge Dale of 24.

Morris died of cancer in 1994. But this clip will help to immoralize her forever.

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