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| Keeping score of Gary Geld & Peter Udell | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 02:33 am EDT 08/21/20 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 02:18 am EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: re: SHENANDOAH: Thoughts and Memories? - StageDoorJohnny 04:59 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
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| I've always been curious about Geld and Udell. They wrote two hits in the 1970s: ''Purlie'' and ''Shenandoah,'' both of which earned them Tony Award nominations (and Udell even won the Tony for co-writing the book to the latter). Cleavon Little and Melba Moore won Tonys for ''Purlie,'' and a 1981 TV adaptation, with Moore, won a CableACE Award, and John Cullum won his first Best Actor in a Musical Tony for ''Shenandoah.'' Both shows have some nifty toe-tapping songs. I especially enjoy ''Walk Him Up the Stairs'' and ''I Got Love'' from ''Purlie,'' as well as ''Why Am I Me?,'' ''Next to Lovin' (I LIke Fightin')'' and ''The Pickers Are Coming'' from ''Shenandoah.'' Geld and Udell wrote one more Broadway show: ''Angel,'' a 1978 musical of ''Look, Homeward Angel,'' that closed after 5 performances. Did that flop cause Geld and Udell to break up? Udell would go on to write two more musicals with Garry Sherman: ''Comin' Uptown'' (1979) and ''Amen Corner'' (1983), but both were short-lived. Does anyone know anything more about Geld and Udell? I couldn't find any footage of them on YouTube, and only about one interview in the N.Y. Times in 1975. They were pop songwriters (''Sealed With a Kiss'') and lamented about getting the brushoff from a number of New York critics. (Anyone catch the 20th anniversary revival of ''Shenandoah'' at Goodspeed in 1994? The cast included Marc Kudisch and James Van Der Beek.) |
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| Link | N.Y. Times: The 'Shenandoah' Saga by John S. Wilson (1975) |
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| re: Keeping score of Gary Geld & Peter Udell | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 05:55 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: Keeping score of Gary Geld & Peter Udell - WaymanWong 02:18 am EDT 08/21/20 | |
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| Without wanting to get too heavily into the hit/flop discussion, I will just mention that neither Purlie nor Shenandoah had paid off when they closed. The former probably would have if it had not been forced to play in three different theatres during its Broadway run. The costs of the two moves it had to make probably kept it from paying off. I posted elsewhere about the Shenandoah situation. It seems to have paid off eventually, but it took a very long time. And it's not like Sweeney Todd, which took an even longer time to pay off, as Sweeney cost a huge amount (for the time) to produce, and I think it had the highest weekly nut in Broadway history at the time. (Had they closed Sweeney when the original leads left, they would have been wise. They lost a lot that had not yet been distributed by running it four more months.) Shenandoah had a low production cost for the time and had a lowish weekly nut. I don't think it would be accurate to describe either as flops. They were both too popular and ran far too long. But they weren't quite hits either. They were sort-of hits. If they had both just about paid off, I think they could be described as "soft hits," which is a good term, one that I would use for a show like Child's Play, which closed with a very small profit and never played a sold-out week. I suppose that since it seems that Shenandoah eventually paid off, it might be described as a very soft hit. And Purlie might be described as a near-hit. But then some short-lived shows have paid off for one reason or another, sometimes just because of a movie sale. |
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