Maybe because it was already based on a famous movie? I'm just guessing.
I know, so was THE KING AND I (though, officially, it wasn't based on the Rex Harrison film). But movie musicals were really out of style by the early 70s. Come to think of it, the big musical film flops of the late 60s probably had more to do with it than the source material.
(ETA Thanks for the link, Mr. M. I saw it on Broadway, but not on TV.)
Thanks, for just three bucks I guess it was worth it - but just a little shabby. I'll track it down elsewhere, or at least put it on my long list of must-reads.
Beyoncé is not an ally. Actions speak louder than words, Mrs. Carter. #Dubai #$$$
"The gods who nurse this universe think little of mortals' cares. They sit in crowds on exclusive clouds and laugh at our love affairs. I might have had a real romance if they'd given me a chance. I loved him, but he didn't love me. I wanted him, but he didn't want me. Then the gods had a spree and indulged in another whim. Now he loves me, but I don't love him." - Cole Porter
"The gods who nurse this universe think little of mortals' cares. They sit in crowds on exclusive clouds and laugh at our love affairs. I might have had a real romance if they'd given me a chance. I loved him, but he didn't love me. I wanted him, but he didn't want me. Then the gods had a spree and indulged in another whim. Now he loves me, but I don't love him." - Cole Porter
One of our biggest concerns was getting her body mike turned off as soon as she exited the stage because she would often begin swearing at the stagehands and wardrobe people.
OMG! I remember that story from WOMAN OF THE YEAR. The sound guy forget to turn her mike off when she exited the stage one performance and the audience heard her drop a litany of F-bombs backstage. I wonder if he forgot to turn the mike off on purpose.
Just curious, but who was Lauren Bacall's understudy in "Applause"? I couldn't find it in the Playbill (Playbill vault).
"Noel [Coward] and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night, I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Noel's door, and he asked, 'Who is it?' I lowered my voice and said 'Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?' He answered, 'Just a minute, I'll ask him.'" (Beatrice Lillie)
I checked my playbill and no understudy or standby for Margo is listed, but I am pretty sure that at least for a while it was Gretchen Wyler. I could not confirm that on ibdb.com, however.
That makes sense. I mentioned Gretchen because she is featured in an interview with understudies. She apparently never got to go on. She described a day when Bacall had fallen during a number but refused to take the rest of the day off. She said something like "Gretchen Wyler is not doing my number!" It sounds in character!
Wyler was Bacall's understudy. She did the bus and truck of Zindel's "And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little" (circa 1972-73). I was in college, she spoke; some of us were invited to lunch with her. She talked about standing by for Bacall. She never went on. She said nothing negative about her, other than "I guess if she lost her voice she might've missed, but on the other hand, who would've known?" Or something to that effect. It wasn't bitchy, it was just an observation. She loathed Anne Baxter's performance, and couldn't stop trashing her after I said I'd seen the Baxter Margo. What I recall: Wyler drank bloody marys at lunch on a performance day, and said "I couldn't do this if I was in a musical." Odd, that distinction. She wasn't especially good in "Miss Reardon" (in the Julie Harris role, not an easy fit). But she had an incredible presence. I had seen her in "Sweet Charity" in London in the summer of '68. She loved talking about "Charity." Fosse apparently loved her. Or so she reported.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
I have no doubt that she was superb in Applause and other shows. Unfortunately, I only saw her in Waiting in the Wings. It was an embarrassing performance.
"Bacall proved to be the exception. She baffled me. She had lived a charmed life but was angry at everyone...
That's certainly not an uncommon trait among many of the wealthy and connected. But Bacall seems to be particularly disliked by many who've worked with/for her.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
AC, Betty is from the Bronx and, speaking for myself, I think part of the shock is the difference between her public persona--gracious, graceful and sophisticated--and her personal persona, which is profane, working-class New York.
She and i went several rounds and she called me every name in the book. But to her credit (and like a lot of New Yorkers I've known), she never once went over my head, tried to get me fired or anything of the kind. I didn't swear at her, but neither did I kowtow to her and she never complained about that.
She played dirty but she played fair, if you know what I mean, in that sense for which native New Yorkers are justifiably famous.
She was also brilliant on stage, despite being too old to play Ruth Sherwood. (And she had been sublime in APPLAUSE.)
She is also first cousin to Shimon Peres, former President if Israel. Though her father was in sales and her mother a secretary, her Bronx background is Jewish middle class. Her acquired patina of sophistication -- and her faux great lady accent -- are era-specific enhancements many young women adopted who entered modeling and acting. I'm reminded of the way Laurents talked about Streisand's employment of that accent in "The Way We Were," infamously noted in his book. It distances the actor from authenticity. No woman from the Bronx, Brooklyn (or Manhattan) has those odd vowels. I get why they drove Laurents crazy. When Bacall uses them, at times she just sounds arch.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling