Bathtubs Over Broadway

Dava Whisenant's 2018 documentary follows Steve Young, a writer on David Letterman's show. Looking for strange records for a segment, Young discovers an unexpected genre: musicals companies produced only for their own employees. These shows were staged at sales conventions from the fifties to the seventies. Songs written about bathtubs, tractors and insurance policies were produced professionally with Broadway composers and performers and never released to the public. Young begins collecting the records. The documentary's warmth comes from finding the people who worked on them. Ageing performers and composers meet someone who takes work nobody knew about seriously, decades later. Chita Rivera and Martin Short also appear. Who it's for: those who like forgotten corners of popular culture and the history of musical theatre. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a large thesis; the documentary is the story of a curious collector and claims nothing more.