There's a rumor that they wanted John Lennon was Jesus on the Jesus Christ Superstar concept album but John won't sign unless Yoko was Mary.
The rumor was based on a London tabloid stirring up gossip about this new "rock opera" about Jesus. I'm told a columnist thought of John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" remarks and thought, "Wouldn't it be a laugh if they offered him the part?" So they got in touch with Tim Rice and said something like "Hey, would you be interested in Lennon playing the part?" Naturally, he was enthusiastic, thinking he was talking to someone working for Lennon and perhaps feeling the album needed the publicity such a casting would lend, using superlatives like "ideal." The columnist then called Lennon, and said something like "Hey, would you be interested in playing Jesus in a pop musical?" and John laughed it off with a "Yeah, sure." Hello, news story, which then got inflated by other periodicals for whom John and Yoko amounted to a running joke at the time (read any of the British press about their peace efforts or their lives as a couple circa 1969) into "John will do it, but only if Yoko is Mary Magdalene." By the very next day after the news story hit, Tim and Andrew Lloyd Webber were compelled to make a press statement, its wording presumably using the news story to get some ink, that they had decided not to offer John the role because it was felt his star presence would draw too much attention away from the project itself. Other name stars were on the docket at one point or another, but John was never seriously in the running.
Now, Bette Midler as Mary Magdalene... that was a very real prospect, and it's a story I've told here before, but is best told by the Broadway production's casting director, Michael Shurtleff, in his book
Audition, where he uses her story as a lesson in why the best performer sometimes doesn't get the role. The relevant excerpt is reproduced here:
"
Why Didn't You Get the Role? The girl who gave the most exciting auditions (she did three of them) for the role of Mary Magdalene in
Superstar was Bette Midler, already a celebrity at this time. Bette had taken my class on how to audition when she was in
Fiddler on the Roof, playing a small role. She was extraordinary even then, and memorable, but she was disheartened at that time by her long tenure hidden among the supporting players of Fiddler. She felt she deserved leads. She was right.
Bette Midler sang "I Don't Know How to Love Him" like no one else: disillusioned, hurt, vulnerable, with the pain of a Mary Magdalene who had been made to believe again after she was determined not to because of the hurts she had experienced. Tom O'Horgan adored her and was strongly tempted (even though Stigwood and the writers were always in favor of the woman who had done the record, Yvonne Elliman), but eventually, I think, he realized this mature, voluptuous, womanly interpretation of the role would not fit in with his cast of hippies and flower children. He couldn't quite let her go, though. I was asked to bring her into the theater to wait for Mr. Stigwood to arrive. 'Miss Midler,' I said, 'if you would be so kind...' And without acknowledging our previous association with each other, I led her to her seat. En route she whispered to me, 'Don't give me away,' and I didn't, for I realized a superlative performance of a celebrity star was being given to surround the audition itself. She was regal and mysterious, this Mary Magdalene, and she revealed not an ounce of the marvelous honky-tonk performer she was to be in her one-woman shows.
I tell this tale to show that actors must not worry about why they don't get a role; they should only concern themselves with doing the best damn audition they know how to do. Midler did brilliant auditions for
Superstar, but she was not cast because it would have disrupted the casting of the rest of the show. Many times I have heard directors say about an actor: 'That is the best audition we'll ever see of that role. Too bad we can't cast him.' Their regret is genuine. But there has to be a balance in casting -- the parts must fit like a jigsaw puzzle -- and there are times when the best auditioners don't 'fit.'
An actor cannot concern himself with that; there lies madness. Just go ahead and audition well, cry a little when you don't get the role you want, but never ask why. The why is usually a series of imponderables over which the actor has no control."
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
