"'Cause they taped it on only one day..." - NBC's The Sound of Music

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...The NBC-TV remake of Rogers & Hammerstein's THE SOUND OF MUSIC as a " live play " production's airing is about one month in the past now , and I meant to post about it here before that ! But I didn't...

  With 18 million viewers IIRC , it certainly qualified as " a hit " . NBC even repeated it a week-and-a-halfish later .

  I saw it both times:-) .

  It was meant to be a " TV play/live production " in the mode of the PLAYHOUSE 90/BELL TELEPHONE HOURs of yore , NBC claiming " For the first time in fifty years..." . I , myself , on the West Coast of the continguous 48 states of the USA (California) saw it as an immediate taped repeat , anyway , being 3 time zones to the west of the Eastern Time Zone , where it would have indeed shown live ~ along with the Central Time Zone .

  The Mountain Time Zone , especially for such a " holiday special " as this , I am not so sure about . Anyone ?????

  Has it shown outside of the U.S,. yet ~ I know we have Australian and Canadian residents here , others ???

[ClarkKent_DC]

Another actor drops out: Andrea McArdle, the original Annie from the original Broadway production, was supposed to cameo as Eleanor Roosevelt, but her father has taken ill: "Andrea McArdle, Broadway's Original Annie, Steps Down from Role in Annie Live!

[ClarkKent_DC]

Somehow, we failed to talk about Annie Live! when it aired, although I did watch it and did enjoy it. To make up for that lapse, here's a review from Vulture: "The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of Annie Live!" I concur with much of this, but not all of it.

• These things tend to be a mix of the theater versions and the movie versions, although they tend to hew closer to the theater versions.
• Likewise here, starting with casting a Black girl in the title role, as was done in the 2014 movie version. Celina Smith delivered, with a big, bold voice and lots of charm.
• The collection of moppets they cast as Annie's fellow inmates at the orphanage were just great, full of energy and cuteness.
• I thought Harry Connick Jr. was miscast as Daddy Warbucks. 
• I loved Taraji P. Henson.
• I liked Nicole Scherzinger, who really had to throw her all into those dance moves just to keep up with the kids from the opener.
• This version stuck to the play in that Scherzinger's Grace Ferrell was Daddy Warbucks's secretary only, not a love interest. 
• This version did not have the helicopter chase from the first movie (and all subsequent movie versions).
• This version was also without Punjab (but I don't know how anyone could make that fly today). 
• Not having seen the stage version, I can't say I was aware that this version restored two tunes that were cut for the movie, but I'm glad they put them back in, just because.
• Corny as it was, I liked the meta moment of Daddy Warbucks declaring "Broadway is back!"