I was casually searching through a website and found an old network TV chestnut. I remember it being promoted on TV when I was a little boy but it aired too late for me to see. Mom and Dad made me go to bed. This chestnut was a one-hour ABC TV special. An original 1966 Stephen Sondheim musical starring Anthony Perkins. Before you say "What? Anthony Perkins?!?!?," the actor starred in a Frank Loesser Broadway the same year Hitchcock's PSYCHO opened (1960).
The ABC TV special with new music and lyrics by Sondheim is EVENING PRIMROSE. Perkins' leading lady was Charmain Carr right before she started shooting the role of Liesl in THE SOUND MUSIC. She sang "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" in the movie.
The special has a weird plot. A young poet hides out from the world at night in a major Manhattan department store, He feels that, at night, he can get poetry written. Then he discovers this group of old folks who've been secretly living in the department store for years. A Mrs. Mundy, a grand old dame who lives in the past, accepts the young poet into her group -- but he later discovers that he's forbidden to leave. He falls in love with her young, lovely maid who can't read or write and reveals to him, "I haven't seen the sun in thirteen years." She wants to leave the department store.
Perkins has a fine opening song when he's alone (he thinks) in the department store. The song is called, "If You Can Find Me, I'm Here." I think Sondheim took the end of that song and applied it to his song from Broadway's FOLLIES (1971), "I'm Still Here." There's a Madam Armfeldt of 1973's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC vibe to the Mrs. Mundy character.
If you're interested, you may be able to find EVENING PRIMROSE on YouTube.
If you want to hear Anthony Perkins sing, here's a vocal from an album he recorded:
And here's his opening number from Stephen Sondheim's EVENING PRIMROSE.
It was a one-hour TV special. Without commercials, it runs about 50 minutes.
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