| The History of Scheduled Broadway Absences for Professional or Personal Reasons | |
| Posted by: portenopete 11:22 am EDT 04/24/24 | |
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| Is there anyone her who's old enough to know or to have researched the manner in which Broadway stars would miss performances in the Golden Age? How was it dealt with and how common was it? Julie Andrews comes to mind when she rehearsed and appeared in the live TV Cinderella on March 31, 1957, a year into her run as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. According to IBDB, Lola Fisher performed from March 25th to April 6th, suggesting that Andrews was rehearsing Cinderella in the daytime and performing in My Fair Lady in the evening (I'm assuming they rehearsed live TV musicals for more than a week?) and then took two weeks off from MFL, the second of which was a (well-deserved) breather after what must have been an incredibly stressful year. (It seems she also had a week or more off in the late summer of 1956). I'm assuming that the Cinderella broadcast was a cause célebre and that the public would have known Andrews would be out that week but were there announcements in the press, items in Winchell or Hopper, that sort of thing? [Looking at IBDB I hadn't realized that Andrews is listed as staying in the show a month longer than Harrison and that means she would have performed with Edward Mulhare for a few weeks.] Am I right in thinking she did miss several shows through her run due to the demanding vocal requirements of Eliza? I'm assuming those absences were relatively last-minute and would have surprised (and disappointed) an audience when they entered the Hellinger lobby and seen the dreaded sign over the door. Andrews waited until My Fair Lady's London run (her part of it, at least) was finished before she got married and then waited until she had left Camelot in April of 1962 to give birth to her only natural child Emma in November, indicating that in her final weeks in Camelot she would have been pregnant (although not necessarily aware of it). This time period coincided with the casting period for the film of My Fair Lady and I'm wondering if she decided to get pregnant when the boom finally fell on her hopes to be cast in the picture? (I don't know if she discusses this in any biography? Has she written an autobiography or memoir?) Walt Disney must have seen Camelot late in Julie Andrews' run because apparently she was already pregnant when he offered her Mary Poppins and she declined and he wanted her so much he said that they'd wait. (Was Van Dyke on board yet, I wonder? He was juggling a TV schedule, although at least he was in Los Angeles for both.) |
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