Does anyone know anything about the musical of gone with the wind

I have the original london cast recording and would love to get the chance to see this show live.

The first mounting of this show was also in London, I believe, in 1972, where it ran for about a year. There were plans to bring the show to Broadway, starring Lesley Ann Warren and Pernell Roberts, but the show closed on the road (in California) and never made it to New York.

I think the biggest problem was trying to cram a four hour movie into a 2.5 hour musical. Maybe the book has been revised. If you end up seeing the tour, please review it for us. Thanks!

The London cast recording is only on LP. I don't think it has been issued on CD yet. Wow, three hours? Interesting. Gone With the Wind played at the Drury Lane Theatre in London and opened in May 1972.

In the U.S., I believe it only played in Los Angeles and San Francisco...you must have seen it in one of those two cities.

There's a relatively new "Gone With The Wind" musical by the same awful composer who wrote the insufferable "Romeo and Juliette" and "The Ten Commandments". You can get the CD and DVD on French Amazon (in French of course). I would not be surprised to see an English version mounted in London sometime in the near future...Fortunately there is no danger of this musical being mounted in the US after the spectacular failure of "The Ten Commandments".

AMAZON FRANCE GONE WITH THE WIND

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I haven't seen the SCARLETT Japanese double-CD for years. I believe it's out of print. I put a link to amazon here. I have the London GONE WITH THE WIND LP as well. Hope it comes out on CD someday. EMI/Angel has the rights. (And will Sony issue the London cast of AMBASSADOR...please.)

Scarlett at amazon.com

Funny about that goof on the LP. Living in London, I worked on that album for EMI, hated it except for one song, and we never could make a good deal for U.S. distribution to get it into mass circulation in the Colonies as hard as we tried. Capitol looked at us as if we were crazy (but then, that's how they initially reacted to being offered the Beatles by their parent company in the U.K., EMI).

Had much more fun (and success) working on the EMI "Show Boat" album in those same years...with Cleo Laine, Lorna Dallas, and Kenny Nelson. We did "Show Boat" as a single LP in the U.K. and a small U.S. label picked it up for a double LP in the U.S.

Both were big, sprawling epics - "Show Boat" worked, "GWTW" didn't - despite Harold Rome.

After the Los Angeles pre-Broadway production closed, the musical received a brief tour in 1976 that began at the Dallas Summer Musicals. The cast included Leigh Beery, David Canary, Laurence Guittard, and Sherry Mathis.

That to the best of my knowledge was the last production ever staged in English of Harold Rome musical. I'd be very curious as well to know if the UK tour next year is Rome's version or the newer (awful) French adaptation.

I remembered reading some news from playbill long ago mentioning Trevor Nunn working on a project of "Gone With the Wind". Is that the same show?

I love Trevor Nunn! He made OKLAHOMA interesting to me and now the Hugh Jackman version is one of my favorite musicals.

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I'd wiped this from my mind....

Michael Cormick will also be a singing Rhett Butler in a recording of a Gone With The Wind musical, not sure, but I'd be surprised if these were unrelated.



Gone with the Wind Competes for Drury Lane???

Updated On: 6/5/06 at 08:55 AM

I was IN the last US production of "GWTW" in 1976 --the one previously mentioned in this thread. It started in Dallas and then continued on to Atlanta's Theater Of The Stars and closed at Miami's Theater of Performing Arts (now named The Jackie Gleason Theater, I believe.) I played Suellen (Scarlett's sister) and it did star David Canary, Sheri Mathis and Larry Guittard (who was amazing as Ashley)--The show however had LOTS of flaws --most especially a 2nd act that became too episodic because of too much material to cover in not enough time. And except for a few tunes, the score was pretty pathetic. One song comes to mind---Rhett sang it to his newborn daughter--it went as follows--"Blueberry eyes and two lips red like cherries, apricot cheeks, watermelon seed hair" One critic wrote that it sounded like he was ordering a California fruit salad instead of singing a lullaby to little Bonnie. Harold Rome was still trying to do rewrites as we toured, but I guess it never came to anything.The technical aspects of the show were pretty astounding for the day--with the burning of Atlanta going on as we" ran from the flames" jumping over horse manure--(yes, we had a real horse and wagon for Scarlett's "escape")

"One critic wrote that it sounded like he was ordering a California fruit salad instead of singing a lullaby to little Bonnie."

Snork! That's too funny. With a line like "watermelon seed hair," though, I guess they deserved it. :)