In 1981, Rick McKay, an aspiring actor and singer, came to New York from Beech Grove, IN, determined to become a Broadway star. It didn’t work out, not so much because the roles were taken, but because they’d been written out of the script.

“I realized that the ‘starring on Broadway’ era had kind of passed,” says McKay. “It was more ‘Cats’ and ‘Les Miz’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ English musicals with big ensemble casts.”

The story might have ended there, but in a perfectly dramatic turn of events, McKay — and old Broadway — have risen again, to glowing reviews, in a movie. McKay’s feature documentary, “Broadway: The Golden Age,” plays the era (30s through 60s) back onstage for a belated curtain call by coaxing and cutting together reminiscences from more than 100 actors, writers, composers and producers who helped make it shine.

“Why would I have Julia Roberts walk through Times Square spouting the history of the theater when the people who could tell these stories are still alive?”

Their testimony, shot over 5 years with a single off-the-shelf digital video camera and cut together with impossibly rare recordings of legendary performances (Kim Stanley, Marlon Brando, Ben Gazzara) on a Power Mac running Final Cut Pro, offers fans something like a second chance to experience what if was like inside the 10 city blocks and 40 prolific years that yielded the best in American theater.

Back Story

In a curious media twist, McKay came to his mission of salvaging classic live theater on digital videotape by way of television. First as a schoolboy in small town Indiana (no theater, no cinema) obsessively watching televised films of Broadway musicals. Then — after years of waiting tables, auditioning for shows, performing solo and writing in Manhattan — as a segment producer for “City Arts,” a local PBS show, and the first digitally shot TV series.

As he produced his segments, McKay jumped into the production mix whenever possible, purchasing a Sony VX1000, the same one used on the show, so he could shoot second camera. “I knew that eventually I wanted to make my own films,” he says.

Eventually arrived suddenly when one of McKay’s projected City Arts segments — about an artist painting a Times Square mural featuring old Broadway legends — was rejected as “maybe not a cutting-edge City Arts piece.” McKay couldn’t let it go. But not until a friend suggested that he include some of the stars who were featured in the mural, and only after he shot some trial interviews, did he find his true subject.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s not about the mural, it’s a short film about talking to these Broadway legends,” says McKay. “Everyone had done something like it with movies, but nobody had done it with the theater because theater happens so ephemerally.”

PBS liked McKay’s 5-minute pitch demo for a projected 45-minute television film, but suggested that he use younger stars. McKay refused. “It was crazy,” he says. “Why would I have Julia Roberts walk through Times Square spouting the history of the theater when the people who could tell these stories are still alive?”

Efficiency Apartment

McKay decided there was no way forward but to make the movie himself. “Around that time, Final Cut was just becoming available. I kept thinking, if I have to do this alone, I can.”

And for the next 5 years, he did, shooting many of his interviews in one room of his two-room apartment, while editing his results in the other.

Next page: A Different Kind of Studio