| Home, Sweet Homer....in British literature! | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 03:35 pm EST 01/14/18 | |
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| So I've been watching way too much TV with a bad shoulder. Just finished the 1976 BBC series, THE GLITTERING PRIZES, by Frederic Raphael, adapted from his novel. It's the story of a group of friends at Cambridge in the early 50's, and how their lives unfolded and intertwined up to the present day. Tom Conti, in a virtuoso performance, played Adam Morris--a character clearly modeled on Raphael himself: a Jew who studied classics and became a writer of both novels and award-winning screenplays. In the final episode, Adam's friend, Mike Clode (Mark Wing-Davey, playing a fairly unpleasant fellow), promises he'll consider making a movie of Adam's latest novel "after 'Home, Sweet Homer.'" Adam says, incredulously, "Home, Sweet Homer?" "it's a working title," Mike reassures him. "What?" says I from the couch. Because to all us theatre nerds, that means only one thing: the Mitch Leigh flop with Yul Brenner that opened and closed on January 4, 1976 after a lengthy tour (I saw it myself). So how on earth did that title end up in Raphael's book (published Jan-Feb 1976) and then the later teleplay? The ill-fated musical had been called ODYSSEY through the summer of 1975; earliest mention of the rename I found in cursory poking in the NYT archives is September 24, 1975. I don't know at what point Raphael had to finish his manuscript and approve proofs for a Jan-Feb publication, but I'm guessing it was around the time of the name change of the show. And there could be another link between Raphael and the famous flop. The original lyricist-librettist of ODYSSEY was Erich Segal--best known for LOVE STORY. Segal wisely jumped ship, taking his name off the credits of the show when it hit the west coast (I think late spring 1975)...but retained a percentage interest in the production. And Segal was a Jewish classicist who also wrote novels and screenplays, as well as Latin and Greek translations and studies of the ancient world. I have no proof that they knew each other, but given my own knowledge of academia--people often know the others in their field. And these two had their whole exra-curricular writing careers in common as well. So I'm guessing Raphael knew Segal, was aware of what was happening with the show, and deliberately slipped in that infamously idiotic title in the novel's final pages. Because I just can't imagine Raphael coming up with that on his own at the exact time a show with that name was limping to New York. Laura |
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