On my rather short list of favorite musicals that aren’t by Rodgers and Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim, 1776 ranks pretty high.

Here is the opening number as performed by William Daniels as John Adams and the rest of the current cast of the original Broadway production on the October 4, 1970, episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. They go on to perform the most dramatic number in the show with John Cullum and the finale.

If the faces look familiar from the movie version, that’s because most of the cast of the Broadway version repeated their roles in the movie.

However, Howard da Silva and Ken Howard were apparently not in the cast at that time so Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson are performed by Rex Everhart and David Cryer. Notice that Everhart does not sign the document with his left hand the way Franklin would have and the way da Silva did. Guess he didn’t get the memo.

Tip of the hat to Mark Evanier on whose blog I found this video.

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