Straddling the line between old school showbiz cheesiness and contemporary short attention span whateverness, Ben is the New Old Gay. He loves Patti LuPone.

I was born a little too late to have more than a vague, if warm, memory of Betty Buckley’s work as a TV mom (on Eight Is Enough), but I have thought of her for years as a quintessential Broadway star. My sister and I used to dance around the living room to the tape of Cats, exhausted just in time to collapse and listen breathlessly to Betty singing Memory. Years later, when I was getting into musicals, “Memory” sounded weird on the Andrew Lloyd Webber CD my mom bought for the car, Elaine Paige’s recording felt unfamiliar, rarified, far away. Then, a friend gave me a video where Angela Lansbury introduced Broadway originals to sing their signature songs. From the alliteration of Buckley’s name, I got the tingle of Broadway magic.

Betty Buckley is a goddess to me, in the pantheon of divas along with Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli and Bette Midler, as well as Betty’s own contemporaries in more recent musical theatre, Bernadette Peters and my beloved Patti LuPone. One of the hallmarks of divahood is a signature song, a calling card, something to be known for in the great tradition of Judy with “Over The Rainbow” – an excellent model not only because of its popularity, but also for the way Judy, later in life, found a new take, a totally different way to sing the song, separate but equal to, or arguably better than her youthfully pure, exquisite original in The Wizard of Oz.

I’ve always felt that Betty, and Patti and Bernadette, the reigning queens of Broadway as I came of age, were shortchanged by the times. A generation earlier, Barbra and the girls made their names on Broadway and soon became household names with film careers and television specials. And albums. Early in their careers, they made record after for record for top-notch labels with top-notch producers. And the leading ladies of Broadway today find similar, if less mainstream, opportunities. (Look at the careers of Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.)

But the 70s and 80s were a different time in the Theatre and in the Music Industry.

This meant that, for the most part, other than cast albums, Betty, Patti and Bernadette’s recording careers didn’t launch until the 90s. (Bernadette actually made some wonderful records in the 70s, but two decades passed before she started recording again, and those early Bernadette albums weren’t even released on CD, except in an incomplete compilation of (someone’s idea of) the best tracks, which was never really promoted.) In the 90s, these women were already into their forties and the result is a sort of Judy Garland effect – early success with signature song/performance a la Judy with Over The Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz followed by an up-and-down career singing showtunes and standards to gays around the world.

A major moment for fans of these ladies was Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall in 1992, a glossy PBS production featuring Liza Minnelli and Glenn Close and other celebrities, opera stars, etc. The highpoints of the night were definitive performances of “Children Will Listen” and “Being Alive” and and “Not A Day Goes By:”

. . . sung respectively by Betty, Patti and Bernadette. Already deeply obsessed with LuPone and a big fan of Bernadette’s work in Sunday In The Park With George and Into The Woods, it was this concert that made me reinvestigate that Betty Buckley I remembered from childhood.