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| re: The GIGI Score | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 03:46 pm EDT 04/11/23 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 03:41 pm EDT 04/11/23 | |
| In reply to: re: The GIGI Score - Erik_Haagensen 11:16 am EDT 04/11/23 | |
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| Erik: Alan says you pointed out that the 2015 ''Gigi'' revival features quite a number of rewritten lyrics that went uncredited. I guess I assumed that Heidi Thomas, who's credited with the ''adaptation,'' might've rewritten them. But if not her, who did it? And I wonder if that person didn't want the credit or if Lerner & Loewe's estates would've stipulated that no credit would be given. As for the 1974 Tonys, I looked them up on YouTube. Elliott Gould presented the category of Best Score. After reading the names of the nominees, he opened the envelope and announced: ''The winner is ... you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative ... 'Gigi,' Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner.'' As the orchestra plays ''I Could've Danced All Night'' (NOT from ''Gigi''), the camera pans the audience for Lerner and/or Loewe, but they are no-shows. Gould looks baffled and then walks offstage, without even saying the perfunctory, ''Apparently, they couldn't be here tonight, so I'll accept it in their honor.'' (Also puzzling: Why is Gould quoting a Johnny Mercer lyric before announcing Lerner & Loewe?) Is there any record as to Lerner & Loewe's thoughts about the stage version of ''Gigi''? Did he discuss it in his ''The Street Where I Live'' memoir? |
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| Link | EntertainmentWeekly.com: Heidi Thomas Talks Vanessa Hudgens and Reworking 'Gigi' (2014) |
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| re: The GIGI Score | |
| Posted by: Erik_Haagensen 06:03 pm EDT 04/11/23 | |
| In reply to: re: The GIGI Score - WaymanWong 03:41 pm EDT 04/11/23 | |
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| Wayman, as to the consistently awful lyric rewrites in the 2015 GIGI, I reached out to the press rep, Jim Byk, to ask who did them, as I was planning to write about the cast recording in my column for BwayTunes. The official reply was as follows: "The lyrics are by Alan Jay Lerner culled from several sources, including his materials for the movie, and his 1973 and 1985 stage revisions. Some pronoun adjustments have been made for the current production and in the case of 'Say a Prayer,' an added verse has been written by Heidi Thomas." This was obviously the company line (Jim Byk is a lovely and trustworthy guy), so I assume the Lerner estate did not want billing for an additional lyricist. It did the same thing on that terrible CLEAR DAY revision. I have numerous scripts for the film of GIGI and the two stage versions, as well as other sources for checking. The fact of the matter is that only four songs in GIGI 2015 -- "The Parisians," "A Toujours," "She Is Not Thinking of Me," and "I Remember It Well" -- had lyrics completely by Lerner. Every other song in the score contained lyric rewrites. One of the biggest rewrites was "I Never Want to Go Home Again," probably because it was assumed that no one knew it, as it had never been recorded. I wrote a whole article just on this subject that my BwayTunes editor, Andy Propst, had said he would publish on his American Theatre Web site. However, it took a fair amount of time to fact-check all my assertions as to the changes, which the article spelled out in detail. By the time it was ready, the recording had been out for a while and the article was no longer timely, and Andy never published it. (It was much too long for BwayTunes, nor did it fit the purpose of the site.) However, if you match the lyrics for GIGI 2015 to what was published in THE COMPLETE LYRICS OF ALAN JAY LERNER, you can see what the changes were. Dominic McHugh and Amy Asch quite rightly did not include any of those rewrites, as they were weren't by Lerner. And they didn't rely on just my research; they did their own as well. It infuriates me to this day that people who listen to the cast album of the 2015 revisal think that those lyrics are all by Lerner. I assume that Heidi Thomas made the lyric changes, as she was credited with the added verse for "Say a Prayer." However, I have no way of knowing for sure. |
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