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

[west end artist1]

Posted: 6/3/06 at 10:06pm

hi there

do you guys know anything about the musical gone with the wind as its going on tour in the uk next year and i thought it sounded kinda intresting

lol

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 6/3/06 at 10:24pm

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!

[west end artist1]

Posted: 6/3/06 at 10:29pm

yeah of course i will

is they a cast recording

apparently it has been totally reworked and its running time is 3 hours but thats all i know really

thanks for the info though

do u know what west end theatre it played ?it sounds like a pretty big musical so im guessing the palace,drury lane or the prince edward

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 6/3/06 at 10:36pm

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.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 1:37am

I saw it in London and in North America and it was truly horrible. It had dreary music - and from Harold Rome no less. It just didn't fly and several years later, I saw "Shenandoah" which was the same time period and was so moving.

The only thing I find sometimes drifting through my memory is the song that had the lyrics "How often, how often the sudden thought of you..."

The show was originally written in Japanese, called "Scarlett" and played in Tokyo for quite a while, (they are huge Margaret Mitchell fans) then came to London in a translated version with Harve Presnall and June Ritchie (we saw it at Druly Lane, typical Drury schmaltz and huge sets) and then came to America. I can't remember where we saw it in the states, but we had tickets to see it again at the National Arts Center in Ottawa (it was part of the 73 subscription series), but it died before it got there.

Good luck reviving that one.

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 1:45am

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.

[Mr. Tuttle]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 2:08am

It was an offering of the LA-San Fancisco Civic Light Opera series and played the Curran in SF. This is the same series that presented the Tony winning/Chita smash "1492".

[BroadwayBaby6]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 5:22am

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

[sicetergo]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 6:19am

I've got the Harold Rome GWTW on vynl- some of it is fine. Noel Coward however thought the second act should have been cut along with a horse that appeared in it, which had rather weak bowels and Bonnie Langford's throat. Ms Langford was playing Bonnie and can now be seen in Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre.

Scarlett - the Japanese version - I think is still available on a double cd

[riv]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 10:16am

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

[allofmylife]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 12:25pm

Thankyou withoutatrace. It was in LA as I have never been to San Francisco. I live in LA and I know if I go to San Fran, I will never come back, so I'm saving it for a life-changing treat. We went to LA a few times as a kid and I realize now that I saw it here.

The record, BTW has a n incredible screwup. The overture is mastered at 2X for the first 24 or so bars, so the violins sound like bumblebees. What a mess. What a shame.

And thank GOD that French version has stayed in France where it belongs.

[IssaMe]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 2:32pm

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.

[best12bars]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 2:41pm

A lady I worked with in "Sugar Babies" had played Belle Watlin in that ill-fated production that closed out of town before reaching Broadway.

I used to ask her about it from time to time during our rehearsals... and she'd smile and say, "don't ask."

Finally, she told me that she was glad she did it and disappointed in how it came out. That's about it, until one day when she laughed and said, "Well, how do YOU think it came across to burn the city of Atlanta on a proscenium stage?" I thought that was pretty funny.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 2:50pm

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.

[west end artist1]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 2:57pm

wow

thanks you guys u have been mega helpfull as always,i diddnt realize it was soooooo bad.
Its a shame coz its the kinda thing u can actually see working as a musical but obviously it just wassnt meant to be.
I also found out that the score was only written 2 years ago for this new version and its been in the pipe line for a few years in the uk.
Ps haha i thought it would be drury lane onlt that could stage such over blown spectacles hehe

lol

[sanda]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 3:29pm

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?

[west end artist1]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 3:57pm

yes i think so though i dont know if trevor Nunn is still involved

[StageManager2]

Posted: 6/4/06 at 4:18pm

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

[Eastwickian]

Posted: 6/5/06 at 7:37am

As westendartist said, this is a completely different show to both the 1972 London version and the newer god-awful French euro-pop mess.

The Trevor Nunn version was been workshopped last year, and is now eying up London theatres to open sometime in 2007...

[sicetergo]

Posted: 6/5/06 at 8:55am

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

[Flahooley]

Posted: 6/5/06 at 6:20pm

THE SCARLETT LETTERS is a book Harold Rome's wife wrote about premeiring the show is Japan. A dull read.

When I was a teenage my best friend and I were obessed with the show. We coveted our out of print lps. When Harve Presnell came to town in a tour of MOLLY BROWN, we waited backstage and asked him to sign it. He looked at the albums, jumped back and exclaimed, "I thought had had all of these burned!!!"

I've since grown out of GWTW as a whole. The whole civil war era is so romanticized that you are tempted to forget the horrors of slavery.

[la92]

Posted: 7/5/06 at 1:19pm

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")

[Fiction Writer]

Posted: 7/5/06 at 1:24pm

Where did it play in Dallas?

[MCfan2]

Posted: 7/5/06 at 1:28pm

"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. :)

[mikem]

Posted: 7/5/06 at 1:28pm

In case anyone cares, I believe "The Ten Commandments"(the French version) was written by a different composer than Romeo et Juliette and the French Gone with the Wind. I still don't understand the whole "let's import a musical but change all the songs" -- it's not like the rights to the book were tied up or something!

Updated On: 7/5/06 at 01:28 PM