Betty Buckley in "Pippin"

[missthemountains]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 4:59pm

Did anyone here get to see Betty Buckley in "Pippin" in the original production? I recently learned she took over for Jill Clayburgh and can only imagine how amazing she must've been. If there's anyway that I could hear how amazing Betty was, I'd be very grateful...

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:05pm

I read that she originally wanted the role from the get-go and she shared the same agent with Jill. That agent actually went behind Betty's back and told the producers she was not interested in the role. The reason he did this was because Jill had just finished a small but important part in Portnoy's Complaint and by getting Jill into the role in Pippin was able to get more money on commission for her services.

When Betty eventually found out she fired him and wound up replacing Jill once she left.

Updated On: 9/1/12 at 05:05 PM

[timesboylive]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:46pm

There was also not one actor in that cast that enjoyed working with Betty during that production. Apparently this was the height of her diva mindset. So many rules about who could address her, who could talk to her, but was free to be as nasty to the rest of the cast as possible.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 5:48pm

I hope Bob Fosse at least got a good lay out of it.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 9:44pm

Sleeping with Betty Buckley and other horror stories.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/1/12 at 10:08pm

Really? Lord, how do people get like that? What swelled her head so? I mean a tiny role in 1776 and a cast replacement in a featured role is hardly the stuff to merit diva like entitlements.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 10:26am

She was glorious in what I usually think is a thankless role. Her "Love Song" and especially "I Guess I'll Miss the Man" were beautifully sung. Her storytelling singing style worked especially well with the latter; I remember feeling a deep connection during that piece. In it, the actress playing Catherine steps out of character to play . . . the actress playing Catherine. Betty is one of the very few I've seen in the role who nailed it.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 10:38am

I find it hard to believe that she had a swelled head at this point. Realistically she wasn't a household name and up until then like another poster pointed out she had only a featured role in 1776, did Promises, Promises in the West End, and never got a chance to play it here because after her London run she went straight back to 1776, lost the film version to Blythe Danner and wound up as a replacement for Jill Clayburgh in Pippin.

So I fail to see why she would have a swelled head, be a diva or treat people rudely at this stage in her career. She essentially was an unknown outside theater circles.



Updated On: 9/2/12 at 10:38 AM

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 12:32pm

Rumpelstiltskin is right in singling that moment out as a tricky one.

Pippin is nearly impossibly metatheatrical for a mainstream musical- maybe hence why it really ISN'T a mainstream musical. At that point, Catherine stops being Catherine and becomes Actress/Catherine- not Betty, or Jill, but Actress/Catherine. And yet, Pippin never becomes Actor/Pippin. Only he and the Leading Player remain "real" or on the other hand "artificial" throughout the play. Everything around them is a construct- but not the construct of the actors in the show playing parts. Rather, the actors in the show playing Actors, playing parts.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 12:58pm

Carlos---by Buckley's own admission, she had "a lot of attitude" back then. Listen to her talk about it in this documentary on the movie Carrie, but she's actually referencing her audition with De Palma for "Phantom of the Paradise," which was in 1974.

So, yeah, it's definitely possible.

As for that story about her agent telling them she wasn't interested in Pippin, that's pretty horrifying. Firing him isn't good enough.




Jump to 3:25 to hear Buckley mention her "attitude" back then.

Updated On: 9/2/12 at 12:58 PM

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 1:33pm

Actually, Buckley's agent didn't just tell the production team for PIPPIN that she wasn't interested in the show- he told them she had left the business all together. The only reason she even ended up getting to do it was because she ran into the prop master on the street, who asked her if she was coming in for Catherine and told her he'd look into it when she said her agent had told her they weren't interested in seeing her.

She tells the story at length on her Downstage Center podcast with Howard Sherman.

[dreaming]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 1:37pm

somethingwicked-that story is the one she told at a concert I went to years ago.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 1:41pm

Yes somethingwicked, that's it! That was a terribly fvcked up thing for him to do.

Thanks besty for the link...that was an interesting interview. I had no idea she auditioned for PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE but I suppose a lot of singer/actresses of that time went up for that role.

[darquegk]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 1:50pm

Betty is all over Phantom of the Paradise- her looped voice overdubs almost every woman in the movie except Phoenix, and she can be seen in cameo a number of times as one of Swan's auditioning women/whores.

[wickedfan]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 1:55pm

I don't find it hard to believe that Buckley's head started to swell. She went right from performing at the Miss America pageant to New York City, booked her first audition singing a show stopping number in what would be a hit, Tony-winning musical (1776), went right from that to being the lead in a West End transfer of another hit musical (Promises, Promises), and coming right back to finishing the part she originated in 1776, and then during a brief hiatus moved into what was essentially the female lead in another big hit musical (Pippin). All by the time she was 25/26. That's a lot of continuous success right off the bat for a young actress. I'm sure Buckley let a lot of it go to her head.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 9:44pm

In defense of Jill Clayburgh...I think she sounds pretty good on the recording. She brings an interesting comic(almost mocking tone to her performance)

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/2/12 at 10:51pm

Checking my Playbills, I saw BB (twice) and don't remember her at all, but do recall JC quite well. A

[biggs bunny]

Posted: 9/3/12 at 2:11am

SEE! I told ya so!!! BB is horrible!!!

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/3/12 at 2:37am

I was most likely studying the PIPPIN.

[CHOOKA]

Posted: 9/3/12 at 4:38am

Totally unrelated to Pippin [ I think] but when Betty Buckley was in London at least 20 years ago doing [whatever] a friend of a friend[of mine] was a London real estate agent who had rented a house to Ms Buckley for a year-after a month,she said the place was haunted,couldn't live there, so they[whoever hired her] had to find another place for her and her parrot[budgie--whatever] and pay rent on the both.Trivia--don't you LOVE it !

[once a month]

Posted: 9/3/12 at 11:52am

I still have my Pippin program with ole Betty.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/4/12 at 4:07am

How did Betty get along with the cast and crew of "Cats" and other shows?

[bryan2]

Posted: 9/4/12 at 8:13am

I think it is funny that you saw BB 2x and JC one time and you remember Jill....someone who couldnt really sing and was not really a pretty woman, ...maybe because she became a pretty big movie star ..and nailed the part as an actress..Love BB dont know how you could not remember her surprises me