Anna Marie Alberghetti question

From a TIME magazine article comes this:

Anna Maria Alberghetti, who said she was too sick to appear in CARNIVAL and dragged herself off to the hospital. Merrick sent the lady a bouquet of plastic roses and demanded a lie-detector test.

Here's a link to the entire article, which also mentions TONS of good and juicy info on his many spats with other actors, from Carol Channing to Jackie Gleason.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,842541,00.html


Anna Maria in CARNIVAL:

The poor thing was relegated to Good Seasons salad dressing commercials.

If I recall correcly, Anna Marie stole some sort of plaque of Merrick's from Sardi's or somewhere and hung it above her toilet in response to the roses.

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Body mics weren't used at the time of CARNIVAL! Instead, therre were mics along the foot of the stage, causing the audience to hear lots of footsteps. The mics were shut off during dance numbers.

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Body mics weren't used until the era of APPLAUSE. And they weren't perfected. I remember seeing a matinee of APPLAUSE and hearing Lauren Bacall's lunch repeat on her throughout the performance.

Even the original JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR used mics with cords.

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Updated On: 5/16/08 at 09:50 PM

They get into it in "Abomnible Showman." She missed performances, she said she was sick, he went to the press. He was photographed heading to her hospital room with a lie detector and she went to equity.

He was famous for that sort of thing. There are more people who didn't get along with him than did.

David Merrick was a very sick, very sad, very angry man who made life a living hell for many of the people who worked for him. He was also a great and gutsy producer who kept hundreds of people employed and entertained millions. Sadly, I can tell you the two often go hand-in-hand.

I usually tell people that the stories they hear about Hollywood producers are all crap. Many are MUCH worse.

I suppose Broadway has its share of subhuman impresarios as well.

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Alberghetti had a magnificent singing voice. Her rendition of "I come from the town of Mira" was exquisite, with the most memorable pianissimo ending I have ever heard in a theatre. Merrick may well have ruined her Broadway career after the hugely loved CARNIVAL.

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Miss Alberghetti arrived with the temperment of an opera singer and the work habits of one. She was used to singing 2-3 times per week instead of 8 for starters and expected the management to accomodate her after the show had settled in. She alienated a lot of people.

Look at her post-Carnival career. It really doesn't exist except for some stock tours and being the Good Seasons Salad Dressing spokeswoman for a series of campaigns which probably paid the bills and then some. I can't remember seeing her name anywhere since the 70s.

Merrick believed in publicity and if showing up at a hospital put the title Carnival in the papers, it was good.

Alberghetti's replacements were Anita Gillette and Susan Watson who were not exactly chopped liver, and could do 8 a week.

Merrick oddly was very shy. Also, his GM, Jack Schlissel, was the true henchman in the office and the notoriously nasty negotiator. Of course everything he did was okayed by Merrick.

An old friend worked for Merrick 1960-64 and she got along with him very well, but as she said, "I wasn't afraid of him and he respected that." When she left his employ he said to her that if she needed him for anything to call. She knew not to waste an offer like that and only took him up on it once.

She was the unsung person who actually called the people with the same names as the critics for the classic Subways Are For Sleeping stunt.

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Then that story Merv Griffin loved to share about Alberghetti wearing a body mike during "Carnival" and forgetting to turn it off while using the toilet offstage is false? Aaaaaw. I did see her once in stock doing "West Side Story" and what I remember most is she didn't take the time to wash her hair that morning. Where her pictures posted outside the theatre showed long full shoulder length hair what we got that matinee was a greasy mop with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. She looked like she needed a shower.

Kennedy Center's CARNIVAL last year proved that the show is wonderfully revivable when in the right hands.

Of course, that is true of almost every show someone calls "dated" or "unrevivable" --- like, um SOUTH PACIFIC.

I wish I had a nickel for every actor ever mentioned in a "mic still on in the john" story.
Actually it did happen to me once in Texas.
Everyone loves toilet humor.