Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: "My parents took me to see the mid-60's revival of Annie Get Your Gun." | |
| Posted by: tandelor 01:56 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: "My parents took me to see the mid-60's revival of Annie Get Your Gun." - RobertC 01:40 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Saw it 52 years ago at The O'Keeffe Center in Toronto and Merman was still spectacular onstage and in the role. | |
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| Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Posted by: Marlo*Manners 04:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: "My parents took me to see the mid-60's revival of Annie Get Your Gun." - tandelor 01:56 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I saw Carol Channing as Dolly Levi on October 31, 1994. I was expecting something ghoulish but got something else. Yes Carol's voice was wobbly and she was singing at pitches lower than she had used in 1964. She was backphrasing and the conductor had his hands full just keeping Carol and the orchestra together. But Carol was (is??) a total performer in a style that was rare then and probably extinct now. She was a HUGE PERSONALITY with a style of performing that was totally her own and larger than life. She did insane comic business that was daring and surreal but which she made work through sheer daring and conviction. Her age didn't matter because she owned the stage and the part. It was like watching a great old time silent movie or early talkie comic - she had her own stylized persona that she impressed on the role and everything seemed to revolve around her. In "Dolly!" that can work as Dolly is the moving force in the farce. A Carol Channing wouldn't get through drama school today let alone be allowed onstage. When Carol left Dolly in the original run there were a raft of big-scaled personality old school divas of a certain age to replace her: Ginger Rogers, Mary Martin, Ethel Merman, Ann Miller, Phyllis Diller, Pearl Bailey, Yvonne De Carlo, Betty Grable, Martha Raye et al. Today you couldn't find such a deep bench of that kind of bigger than life star at any age. I think the reason so many of the current Dollys are older than 60 (and Mame has had this effect too) is that actresses who are younger than the baby boom generation aren't trained or aren't allowed to be larger than life eccentric personalities. I was looking at the pictures of Paige Davis as Mame at the North Shore Music Festival. She is probably an excellent actress and fine singer/dancer. But her personality needs to be larger than life and quirky for Mame Dennis. I didn't see that. She needs style and glamour too. I didn't see that. Davis seemed human size, naturalistic and normal. When we have our weekly "Let's cast the Broadway revival of "Mame" threads the casting suggestions have tended towards the septuagenarian actress. The late Debbie Reynolds, Cher, Liza Minnelli with all her ailments, Bernadette Peters, etc. Everyone else who is younger is too normal, too nice and too TV small scale. Angela Lansbury was just over 40 when she created Mame on Broadway. Carol Channing was about 43 when she created Dolly Levi. Yet I think the reason that we don't have say Sutton Foster as Mame or Dolly Levi is that she is too normal, too nice and too human sized. The divas are older. The one exception is possibly Kristen Chenoweth who I could see as Dolly. Kristen is turning 50 this year. Marlo Manners (Lady Barrington) Idiosyncratic old school diva who knows one when she sees one |
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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:01 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - Marlo*Manners 04:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I don't have a good enough ear to always be sure, but I think that friends have told me that Channing did not sing in lower keys in 1995 than she had in 1964. The voice had deteriorated and that perhaps made her sound like she was singing lower in terms of vocal timbre, but the original keys for her (which I think most of the successor Dollys did not use) were so low that going lower was almost not even an option. :) But I may be wrong, and perhaps she did use lower keys on those late tours and the last Broadway run for her. Did you see her on Broadway or on the pre-Broadway tour? 1994 suggests that you saw her on the pre-Broadway tour, but I wonder if you meant to type 1995. If you did see her on Broadway, I'm surprised to hear that the conductor was having trouble with her backphrasing since she was, except on nights when she wasn't well (which started to happen during that last Broadway run), incredibly consistent in the role. She was not the only Dolly to backphrase a lot. Miller never played Dolly on Broadway or on one of the major national tours, but she did play it on a Kenley tour. There was a wide range of performer types among Channing's successors on Broadway and on the tours of the original production, and I think some were probably not especially larger than life, while others decidedly were. Anyway, it's been years, I think, since we've had the talk here about the rarity nowadays of eccentric performers of the type we used to have. We used to have it a lot. |
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| The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. | |
| Posted by: Marlo*Manners 11:13 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - AlanScott 10:01 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| BTW: Channing got a very good review in the NY Times and was praised in other publications. The production looked like a scaled down touring production that was playing in a big Broadway barn. Lee Roy Reams stuck very closely to the Gower Champion template. Channing's wig was a strange raspberry pink color. The rest of the cast was aged up a bit - Florence Lacey was a rather matronly but beautifully sung Irene Malloy and Jay Garner was Horace Vandergelder. The rest of the cast I forgot and were likely forgettable. Channing was managing her voice from phrase to phrase and "Before the Parade Passes By" was a triumph of will over reduced means. She put it over though. Physically, I remember incredible physical business that required lots of control over the body. But I didn't get any sense she was frail or unsteady on her feet. The eating scene was a tour de force as she stuffed her face full of potato puffs (actually little pieces of dyed tissue paper that she balled up in her cheeks and didn't swallow) while rattling off Dolly's dialogue with Horace. Anyway, Miss Channing was probably not "ageless" but definitely still giving a star performance. Marlo Manners (Lady Barrington) |
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| re: The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:58 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: The day and month are correct, the year is wrong - October 31, 1995 on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. - Marlo*Manners 11:13 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I'm sure the production played in much bigger barns on the road before (and after) Broadway. Both times I saw her during that last run, she had tremendous energy. As I noted in another post, she was ill at one point during the run, but it's hard to imagine anyone being more energized than she was the two times I saw her. Some of the roles were cast with people older than in the original, but Garner was only four or five years older than Burns. Lacey was probably back because she was available and had done the role in the 1978 revival. Herman loved her in the role, and I think Channing was probably happy to have someone there who had been in it with her before and with whom she probably got along very well. It may be that the Cornelius, Michael DeVries, who was in his mid-40s, was hired more to match with Lacey than directly because of Channing. |
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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 04:47 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - Marlo*Manners 04:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Part of the issue is that many of the actresses you mention who followed Channing as Dolly became household names as the stars of Hollywood musicals and HELLO, DOLLY! came around at exactly the right time for these ladies, who'd seen their film careers end as screen musicals went out of style. There was a deep bench because those women were specifically cultivated by Hollywood studios and had careers in an art form that largely does not exist anymore (although we do get a film musical every couple of years or so). Even stage musicals were evolving at that time and Martin and Merman were grande dames who were nearing the end of their stage careers by the time they took on DOLLY. If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing. |
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| " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." | |
| Posted by: RobertC (robertcollier930@gmail.com) 04:58 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - JereNYC 04:47 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Believe it or not, it was proposed that Ethel Merman and Mary Martin play the batty sisters in a musical version of Arsenic and Old Lace. I believe the year was 1973 or so. I found this information in one of Steve Suskin's books. | |
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| re: " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:52 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." - RobertC 04:58 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Yes, I remember reading that. First of all, Arsenic and Old Lace does not cry out for music (and I played Teddy in high school--probably my favorite role, so I know what is fun in the show). Second, the idea of Merman and Martin in the same book show (not a revue or special concert, such as they did a few times) just feels wrong--shockingly wrong, as Mrs. Stephen Haines might say! That's what makes the Forbidden Broadway parody of them singing "An Old Fashioned Wedding" so droll--while they can inhabit the same worlds (Annie GYG, for example), they can't be there at the same time. It would do something frightful to the time-space continuum. | |
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| re: " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 08:07 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." - BruceinIthaca 07:52 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Ye gads, what would Ethel Merman and Carol Channing have been like if they had co-starred in "Legends"? | |
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| "Ye gads, what would Ethel Merman and Carol Channing have been like if they had co-starred in "Legends"?" | |
| Posted by: RobertC (robertcollier930@gmail.com) 08:17 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: " If they'd continued to work into the 1970's on Broadway, I'm not sure what roles they'd have been playing." - PlayWiz 08:07 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Well, first of all they would turn it into a musical to take advantage of the stars. The obvious choice to write the score, would of course be Jerry Herman ;-) | |
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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Last Edit: Marlo*Manners 05:03 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| Posted by: Marlo*Manners 04:55 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - JereNYC 04:47 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Actually Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, Martha Raye and even Betty Grable had been on Broadway slightly before or during their careers in Hollywood in the thirties and forties. Obviously Merman, Martin and Pearl Bailey were almost exclusively Broadway stars. However, Jere you are right in the main: they were more famous as stars of golden age Hollywood musicals. I would also mention that the 1970's was when I think that old school big glamorous style went out of style. "I AM big, it's the movies (musicals, plays, TV shows) that got SMALL!!" The 70's stars were very different from the glamorous sixties stars. 60's stars like Jane Fonda changed their look and style in the 70's. More naturalistic, more human, less mannered. Lady Gaga has been suggested as a possible Mame (she wouldn't do it - she would want to do something original and her own if she wanted to be on Broadway). Pop stars and stand-up comediennes can be larger than life these days. (Also, I apologize to Kristin Chenoweth for mispelling her first name for the 1000th time) Marlo Manners (Lady B) |
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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 05:14 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 05:04 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - Marlo*Manners 04:55 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Why wouldn't Lady Gaga consider a revival? She's doing the latest retread of "A Star Is Born" in the movies. Btw, how come nobody has ever recast that old chestnut and made Vicki Lester into Victor Lester and made Norman Maine into Norma Maine? I think reversing the sexes might be at least an interesting spin on this oft-told story, having an over-the-hill lady star help a newcomer male. Mary Martin and Ethel Merman, had they continued, perhaps might have done the musicals that Lauren Bacall did, among some other things. There might have been a musical version of "Arsenic and Old Lace" written for these two ladies, along with stories of madcap grandmas, and a musical "Harold and Maude", among other kinds of things. I still think if it were musicalized well, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone (if she could still crawl after her surgery) would be incredible as Jane and Blanche, respectively, in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". I've heard the existing musical isn't so hot, but there are various versions of properties like "Phantom", "La Boheme", etc. so you never know if someone else might try to attempt a new treatment. I could just visualize Bernadette doing an equivalent placed song for "I've Written a Letter to Daddy"! |
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| re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:53 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Parallel observation: "Larger than Life" performers like Channing, Merman even LuPone. Do we still cultivate them? - PlayWiz 05:04 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Norma Maine sounds like a role the late Bobbi Adler (RIP Debbie!) SHOULD have played! | |
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