We are sitting in a lounge off the empty Mandell Weiss Theatre, a few weeks before the opening of Harmony, Barry Manilow s impassioned tribute to six musicians caught in the dark web of history. We first heard a CD of these boys work the Comedian Harmonists. And then Bruce saw this documentary that was all about their lives and it really turned us both on. Barry and I are infomaniacs, offers Bruce Sussman, a veteran writer of four Broadway musicals and collaborator with Manilow on Harmony at La Jolla Playhouse.
Music history is our cup of tea.
We were stunned that this was news to us, that a group of singers as renowned as they were in the 1920s and 30s would just not be in our consciousness. Someone had slapped the group s old 78s together on a CD, and the talent of the singers was incredible. Sussman learned that a documentary on their lives would be shown at the Public Theater in New York, announced for only two nights. Barry was in California and I was in New York, so I went to the Public Theater and sat through four hours about the Harmonists in German with English subtitles. The documentary had been made in the 70s, when four of them were still alive.