By Steve Gallagher

BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN AGE, a documentary currently in post-production, is the first film to recount the history of the famed White Way from the point of view of the actors who lived it. Director Rick McKay, an Emmy award-winning producer for the PBS series City Arts and Egg, the Arts Show, has spent the past five years tracking down dozens of Broadway legends, compiling an extensive archive of feature-length interviews with everyone from Fay Wray to George Abbott to Farley Granger to the seclusive Maureen Stapleton. Together with archival footage, home movies provided by the stars, and still photos, the feature McKay intends to fashion will necessitate leaving a great deal of the material he’s recorded out of the film. McKay hopes the omitted material can be repurposed as an epic series of half-hour profiles. At the very least, as the most comprehensive oral history of Broadway stars extant, it’s certain to be of interest to scholars for years to come and will likely be made available to a stock-footage house for re-sale to other documentary filmmakers and television producers. Little did McKay know when he undertook the project that, in the process, he would create a library with as much potential as his highly anticipated feature.

[contact: Rick McKay, rckmck@aol.com]