| re: The 'Wildcat' Debacle | |
| Posted by: FleetStreetBarber 04:35 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
| In reply to: The 'Wildcat' Debacle - Clancy 01:06 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
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| I started reading the New York Times piece with great interest, but eventually a healthy skepticism settled in when I got to the statement that "in 1960 attendance on Broadway was starting to wobble." Where, please, is the evidence? Shows that were running concurrently with “Wildcat” included the record-breaking “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music,” “Camelot,” “The Music Man,” “Gypsy” and “Bye, Bye Birdie,” to name a few. Broadway was thriving, tickets were still within reach of the middle class New Yorkers and suburbanites who back then were the mainstay of the Broadway audience, and Broadway was popular enough to be featured almost every Sunday evening on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” By the time I got to the author quoting Lucille Ball as having said her character of Wildcat Jackson was “the cat with more bounce to the ounce, as she put it in her autobiography," I got the distinct impression that Strauss had never listened to the OBCR. I don’t doubt that Lucy said that, but she was clearly referencing Carolyn Leigh’s lyrics for the title song. Strauss suggests that the fact that Lucy wasn’t much of singer or dancer was what sank the show, but Ball’s fans already knew what to expect. Lucy Ricardo’s awful voice was the butt of countless self-deprecating jokes on “I Love Lucy,” although Lucy did seem to know how to put over a dance routine in the show’s many musical numbers over the years. Because of Lucille Ball’s enormous popularity, the show sold out at almost every performance in Philadelphia and on Broadway and the OBCR was high on the weekly Billboard chart for several months as reported by Variety. And while “Wildcat” was not the gusher that some had hoped for, it did have an afterlife in summer stock, notably with Martha Raye. So when I read words such as “debacle” and “disaster” in connection with “Wildcat,” I have to assume they’re being used to Trumpian excess to sell books rather than to shed a clear light on a fading moment in Broadway’s past. | |
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| Previous: | re: No debacle. You have to be careful about books that "mix fact and fiction." - Michael_Portantiere 11:55 am EDT 08/01/20 |
| Next: | re: The 'Wildcat' Debacle - champagnesalesman 04:06 pm EDT 07/31/20 |
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