Does the role of Stella Deems work better with a white actress or black actress?

[E.Davis]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 3:26pm

Just curious what people's thoughts are.

[ljay889]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 3:27pm

I don't think it matters. I DO think it works better with an actress who dances the ENTIRE number, as White does. To me, it always seemed liked a cop out when Stella walks off for the dance breaks. Updated On: 9/17/11 at 03:27 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 3:29pm

It doesn't matter. I liked Terri White, although I liked Joanne Worley more, but it has nothing to do with the race of either actress.

[E.Davis]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 3:30pm

I agree that she should be on stage the whole time, and yes Worley's interpretation of the song is amazing.

[Skip2]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 3:43pm

Besides McCarty, there's only one more brilliant performance of Stella: Diane J. Findlay. Heaven.

[AC126748]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 4:51pm

I have always wondered why this role--like Marta in COMPANY--has become the one role in this show usually cast with a non-white actor.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 6:25pm

While I do like the number better when Stella is involved with the whole thing, her leaving would make sense in that time period of the "original" number. That was back in the day when you still had your featured singer who would duck out to let the dancers do all the heavy hoofing, and then duck back in for the big finish. It's the situation being portrayed with "One" in A Chorus Line. While in the show the dancers are being given this amazing finale, in the reality of their world they would ultimately be performing all of this solely to highlight the star of the unnamed show who would be spot-lighted down stage center receiving all the glory and praise from the audience.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 6:31pm

It makes NO difference at all -- zippo.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 6:43pm

After careful research, I've discovered that the role of Stella Deems works best with a Cabbage Patch Doll surrounded by Barbies.

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 7:50pm

What about the Kens?

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 8:06pm

I found mine were always headless anyway, so I don't think that really matters.

[raker]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 8:15pm

It depends. Were there black stars or chorus girls in follies-type shows on Broadway "between the wars?"

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/17/11 at 8:34pm

AC1, it's the tap dancing of course.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/18/11 at 7:37pm

Yes, raker, there were black stars of white reviews between the world wars. (I had to look it up.)

Here, for just one example, is the cast list of Irving Berlin's "As Thousands Cheer" in 1933:

http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=11762


It starred Ethel Waters as well as Clifton Webb and Marilyn Miller.
Updated On: 9/18/11 at 07:37 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 6:28am

To say "there were black stars of white revues" as if it were common is a huge mistake. Ethel Waters was the first African-American woman to share star billing (and have a star dressing room) in a Broadway revue that wasn't "all-black." It had never happened before her. Producer Sam Harris (not Ziegfeld) was the one who took the chance, and it paid off in "As Thousands Cheer," back in 1933.

But Ethel Waters isn't an "example" of it so much as the exception to the rule. She was a pioneer in that respect.

Gee, I'm running out of names already. Not too many of them.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 06:28 AM

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 7:35am

Boy, everyone's really dancing around the question here, aren't they?


White.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 8:19am

I think it depends on the shade of white and the shade of black. Not too white because the skin will be whited out on the bootleg and Dear God, not too dark either because then you'll only see teeth and eyes on the bootleg.

It's all about the bootlegs. (As Patti LuPone says)
Updated On: 9/19/11 at 08:19 AM

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:02am

Stella has always struck me as a Jamaican Rosicrucian Rastafarian bisexual of half Chinese extraction who, in her 30s was a proponent of Kabbalah.

Isn't it obvious?

[AC126748]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:05am

That's certainly Terri White's interpretation.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:09am

I wish she'd wear her Star Trek costume on stage, though.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:18am

To me, it always seemed liked a cop out when Stella walks off for the dance breaks.

Nothing Michael Bennett did was a cop-out.

First of all, as AEA AGMA SM said, it was the style back then. Watch any Busby Berkeley movie and you'll see that in the big dance numbers, the vocalist begins the number, then exits and (usually) returns at the end for the big finale.

It's the difference between Patti LuPone's "Anything Goes" number and Sutton Foster's.

There was simply no requirement back then for a leading players to that much of a triple threat (although a few were). It was assumed that the vocalist would start the number, get the audience revved up, then the dancers would bring the audience to another level of excitement, and then the vocalist would return to bring the number to a dazzling conclusion.

Bennett took that convention and turned it in on itself in "Who's That Woman": Stella signs off and "shuffles off to Buffalo" and the women are left to do what "winded" them even when they were 30 years younger.

They make it through the first half of the number fairly well
and then the tap section starts--and Bennett weaves in the "ghosts" who help the older women do what they used to do for Stella: bring the number to a fever-pitch of excitement. Then Stella comes in and sings the countermelody over them.

It was an orgasmic coup de theatre that operated on so many levels at once. The dubbed silent footage barely begins to convey how mind-blowing it was:

http://youtu.be/nhQeVQ6677A

But it was far from a cop-out!

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 10:18 AM

[adamgreer]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 10:57am

Oh, goody. Another holier than thou, my opinion is the only that matters, essay from the "esteemed" PalJoey.


Updated On: 9/19/11 at 10:57 AM

[After Eight]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 12:08pm

^
I don't find Pal Joey's attitude to be holier than thou, but I do find his posts worthy of esteem. He knows what he's talking about, and he has a lot of insightful things to say. And I'm grateul for the clips he posts.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 12:22pm

Oh, Jordon. You're so cute when you sneer.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 12:30pm

When we have someone like Joey, so informative and old enough to have worked for Dimitri, we should respect him.