BROADWAY HOUR-Sheraton NY Hotel & Towers 1993-1996

The Broadway Hour is a lively record of Broadway culture as heard from a hotel lounge, a radio studio, and a room full of people who know the stage from the inside. It moves fast. The format mixes live songs, interview segments, trivia contests, sponsor reads, and brisk introductions that place each guest inside a larger theater world. The show is at its strongest when it lets memory do the work. Carol Channing returns to New York and Hello Dolly with the air of someone stepping back into a role that still belongs to her. Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones bring The Fantastics into the room through a familiar melody and talk of new work. Dr. Billy Taylor connects theater songs to jazz language. Julie Stein gets the room laughing and listening as old Broadway, Hollywood coaching, popular song, and immigrant-family origin story blur into one long career tale. The conversations are polished but not stiff. They have the rhythm of live radio: a question, a story, a little banter, a commercial, then another guest waiting in the wings. Some episodes lean toward cabaret and performance, with Maureen McGovern, Julie Wilson, Brent Barrett, and others singing in the room. Others pull back to the business and future of Broadway through figures such as Jed Bernstein, Stuart Lane, and Richard J. Alexander. The result is not a tidy archive. It is a working snapshot of theater people promoting shows, honoring peers, raising money, remembering strange breaks, and explaining why live performance keeps its charge. The sponsorships and station chatter are part of the texture. So are the names, venues, benefits, and show titles passing by in quick succession. For theater listeners, that density is the pleasure. The show feels close to Broadway as a social world, not just an art form.