| re: The History of Scheduled Broadway Absences for Professional or Personal Reasons | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 06:20 pm EDT 04/26/24 | |
| In reply to: The History of Scheduled Broadway Absences for Professional or Personal Reasons - portenopete 11:22 am EDT 04/24/24 | |
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| In those days, theatre was covered by most or all of the major New York dailies on a daily basis. Often but not always, the same items would appear in most of those papers. Even Women's Wear Daily had a big daily theatre column with all the news. So things like absences known about in advance would be mentioned. Sometimes it might just be on the day that the absences started, other times it would be earlier. But if you didn't read the columns every day, you might miss knowing about a particular absence. With a show like My Fair Lady that was sold out months in advance, you might find out only well after buying the tickets that a particular actor was going to be out, and then you'd have to probably wait months again if you wanted to exchange your tickets. Andrews’s absence for Cinderella was mentioned in some papers in late February and early March but in others not till the week before. It wouldn’t surprise me if full rehearsals for Cinderella started only the final week. Things were done quickly in those days. When Andrews missed 5 performances in August 1956 and then 13 performances in September 1956 due to vocal stress, it was covered in the press. Also covered was when Rex Harrison was out for 8 days in August 1956. This included when a performance had to be stopped altogether after around 40 minutes because Harrison’s standby at the time, Tom Helmore, lost his voice. This was a relief for Andrews, who was having serious vocal problems at the time herself and only went on because Harrison was out. She was barely getting through the performance herself. She had decided she needed to cut “I Could Have Danced All Night” completely at that performance and had sent word to the stage manager, who meanwhile was trying to contact Herman Levin to get permission to stop the performance, When Harrison signed for eight more months after his initial year’s contract was over, he demanded and got eight weeks of vacation. Some of this he took by skipping Saturdays altogether — he hated Saturday night audiences — and sometimes Friday as well. Although this was mentioned in some places in the press, since it wasn’t a normal vacation, audiences were probably surprised to get there and find that Harrison was out. He also took a week off at one point to to do a play on television. Altogether, Harrison took around 12 weeks of vacation during his 20 months in the show. So before Mulhare took over full time, Andrews had already played around 12 weeks of performances with him. Mulhare took over full time on November 29, 1957. Sally Ann Howes replaced Andrews on February 3, 1958. So Andrews performed for more than two months with Mulhare after he took over officially, and in addition around three months when Harrison took vacation time. |
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| Previous: | The History of Scheduled Broadway Absences for Professional or Personal Reasons - portenopete 11:22 am EDT 04/24/24 |
| Next: | re: The History of Scheduled Broadway Absences for Professional or Personal Reasons - BroadwayTonyJ 09:07 am EDT 04/27/24 |
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