| re: She has a Donaldson which was the big theater award before the Tonys | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 07:02 pm EDT 10/02/23 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 06:46 pm EDT 10/02/23 | |
| In reply to: re: She has a Donaldson which was the big theater award before the Tonys - JereNYC 06:04 pm EDT 10/02/23 | |
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| A lot of shows she did, including "My Fair Lady", "Camelot" and "The Boy Friend" are still well-known properties, as there were film versions of them too. Two properties written for her, which have in somewhat altered form, appeared on Broadway were "Cinderella" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie". "Mary Poppins" and "Sound of Music" films also are musical theater stylistically, even if she did them on screen. She championed Broadway musicals in her recordings and in her tv work. After being the top (or among) box-office stars in the mid-60s, she had a couple of huge flops ("Darling Lili" and "Star!", the latter having a lot of musical theater content in it -- the best parts of the film -- and the soundtrack is terrific!). In her two autobiographies, she relates how she and her second husband made their lives very complicated by lots of moving between London, Switzerland, Los Angeles and New York over the years. Their choice, but theater wasn't top priority for years. Yes, she had less of a commitment to wanting to perform on the stage after a while unlike those other ladies you mentioned. She was planning on coming back for "She Loves Me", but Hal Prince decided not to wait and went ahead with Barbara Cook. Plus, Andrews had been planning to do a film version of that co-starring Dick Van Dyke, as well as doing an Irving Berlin musical called "Say It With Music" which were cancelled by management at her film studio -- so she was still committed to doing musical theater songs at that point. But when a lot of overstuffed musicals -- those of hers I mentioned above, as well as "Dr. Dolittle", etc. flopped, it spelled the end for the most part of big musicals on screen. Even though she didn't do as much stage work, she did a lot of musical theater material in film, television and concerts. Merman and Martin made films but hadn't a comparable huge hit in movies as Andrews on a number of occasions. Foster and McDonald have done tv but haven't really cracked the movies. Lansbury has some great breadth of movie roles as well as huge later in life tv stardom. But only maybe Barbra Streisand (with even less of a theater career) had that Broadway to Hollywood landmark kind of career as a musical star. The recorded performances of Andrews singing the scores of "My Fair Lady", "Camelot", "The Boy Friend" on Broadway and the soundtracks of "Mary Poppins", "The Sound of Music", "Cinderella", "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Victor/Victoria" to me still have a connection to Broadway which makes her seem landmark to me. I recall many years ago reading about her performance of Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" being considered already acclaimed as one of the all-time great performances, a landmark if you will. But you have good points, too. And yes, I wish she had come back years before -- her Liza in "Lady in the Dark" could have been great. |
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