Does the role of Stella Deems work better with a white actress or black actress?- Page 2

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 12:56pm

I sneered?

[Kalimba]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:08pm

I think PalJoey confused AdamGreer's post for you Jordan.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:11pm

Well, if you really want to go back to the "golden age," half the chorus would have walked off the stage, too, or at least spread out in the background and watched. They used to cast separate singing choruses and dancing choruses, because they firmly believed you couldn't be "the best" at both on Broadway.

I actually agree with that for the most part and fall into the "multi-taskers fail" camp. There are very few people who can do both extremely well (kinda like driving a car while talking on your cell phone). Oh, sure there are dancers with decent voices, but they're not really good singers. And there are singers who can do the steps, but they're not really good dancers. Something always gives.

And stars were rarely expected to do both. The movies (or at least the illusion of them with dubbed actors--for both their voices and their taps--particularly at MGM) changed all that. Audiences began to expect triple threats (whether real or "created"), because they grew up watching them in movies.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 01:11 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:13pm

Oops! Of course, it wasn't you, Jordan!

It was AdamSNEER.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:28pm

I've posted a few times in this thread but never answered the question (since we've been called out for "dancing around it") ...

It would be very unlikely that Stella, in that era, would have been a woman of color starring in a Broadway revue. Unless she WAS Ethel Waters, also meaning that she would have by far been the biggest star in that reunion, not a featured performer. So essentially, it's "colorblind casting" here, not realistic for the period.

But then you have to ask yourself how realistic is "Follies?" My answer is not all that much. It's a pastiche (in both senses of the term) and is more surrealistic than realistic. I find none of the numbers or characters or even the situation/concept to be "real." I've said it's a show about a reunion conceived and created by people who apparently have never attended one in real life.

I don't find anything that plays out in Follies to come from truth/reality, but rather from emotional/psychological truths. Even if the situations aren't truthful at all on the surface, the emotions on display are.

So in that realm, I have no problem with Stella being non-white any more than I have a problem with all these adults "acting out" fantasy scenarios that would never really happen at a reunion of this kind in the first place.

But I do believe in the "memory ghosts" (that aren't really ghosts). I do, I do, do!

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 01:28 PM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:33pm

I'd like to see a woman of color tackle Solange.

[Kad]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:35pm

That would make Solange into a Josephine Baker analogue, wouldn't it?

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:37pm

It would, and I see no reason why not. In fact, I wish Eartha Kitt would have been willing to play Solange in the '85 Follies in Concert or the first revival. That would have been great.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 01:37 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:40pm

Who did Kitt play in the Berlin production? I have it on DVD at home but haven't watched it in years.
Updated On: 9/19/11 at 01:40 PM

[ljay889]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:42pm

Kitt was the replacement Carlotta in the London production. A very unique take on the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbhEo-4_ETc

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:43pm

I love her "I'm Still Here." Because she makes it still sound like a follies number in a revue, not just a power ballad statement.

When she gets to the last verse (I've been through Reno ...) is when it suddenly becomes a confession and not another show song. I love the switch in her acting. A great choice, either from her or the director.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 01:43 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:46pm

No not the London production, the '91 Berlin production. It was all in German.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 1:49pm

Ziegfeld was pretty progressive. He had black singer/humorist Bert Williams headline the Follies in 1910:



Williams was the first African-American performer to co-star with whites in a Broadway show. In deference to the times, Ziegfeld never had Williams appear onstage with the all-white Ziegfeld girls. Ziegfeld also booked the tours only above the Mason-Dixon Line, because Williams would not perform in the South.

The Nicholas Brothers also headlined in the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies.

I'm not sure about other black performers, but Florence Mills turned Ziegfeld down in 1922, choosing instead to be the first black performer to top the bill at the Palace.



So perhaps Florence Mills could be the historical justification for a black actress to play Hattie (not that there really needs to be one, anyway).

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:05pm

Jordan, Eartha Kitt played Carlotta in the 1991 Berlin production as well. Here's "Beautiful Girls," and you can see character names written on their banners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnAneQudLxQ&feature=player_embedded#!

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:11pm

She played Carlotta in Berlin. She's also the only one in the cast who speaks and sings in English. That production is so very strange. All the Loveland songs are reordered at the end.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:13pm

Poor Bert Williams. Such a tragic life. Hard to believe it was 23 years after his Follies appearance that the first African American woman (Ethel Waters) did her starring turn in a racially mixed (aka, otherwise "all white") revue. 23 years is a long time with not much progress.

Updated On: 9/19/11 at 02:13 PM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:17pm

That's right! I forgot she sang in English. Also, my friend who is German watched it and told me there was a lot of different dialogue added to that production that wasn't in any version he (or I) had ever seen.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:20pm

It also notably splits the role into two women, played by twins (or at least what appear to be twins on the video).

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 2:23pm

That tenor sings the crap out of Beautiful Girls ... especially the ending where he modified the final notes a bit, but that last note is a killer!

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 9/19/11 at 4:50pm

Jane White played Solange for the Roundabout.

Re the original question: the role works best when Stella doesn't talk and vocalize through the number.

And the number works best when the other women don't either.

It's about them getting caught up in the past.

This certainly isn't the first production to do it this way, but I think it lessens the number's effectiveness as a number and for the show as a whole.

Of course, the choreography here doesn't help either.

[3bluenight]

Posted: 9/20/11 at 6:15pm

for me the question isn't does the role work better with an actor of color, but what is it about this role that has been singled out for it to be a woman of color?

is it that it is one of the most prominent featured roles in the show? meaning that who's that number is one of the most famous sequences and that the lead vocalist subsequently becomes a highly visible role. does this make the role more attractive when thinking of color blind casting?

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/20/11 at 6:40pm

It might just be a case of it working really well once and becoming generally accepted as a "non-risky" option.

Same think with Marta in "Company," after LaChanze played it.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 9/20/11 at 6:59pm

Jonelle Allen, the fabulous black star of TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA played Salonge in a very good concert version of FOLLIES in Orange County about a decade ago. She played it very much in the "Josephine Baker" mold and was terrific -

The rest of that cast was

Durant Plummer... Teri Ralston
Phyllis Rogers Stone... Stephanie Zimbalist
Ben Stone... Kurt Evans
Buddy Plummer... Harvey Evans
Dimitri Weisman... John Raitt
Hattie Walker... Betty Garrett
Carlotta Campion... Julie Wilson
Solange LaFitte...Jonelle Allen

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/20/11 at 7:04pm

In my defense, Best12, the original question was not whether black Follies stars between the wars were common or whether it was probable or likely that Stella would have been black, but whether it was possible.

I believe my answer of "yes" was correct, even if you found it misleading. In addition to Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker herself starred in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. Still the exception rather than rule, but possible.

[ljay889]

Posted: 9/20/11 at 7:17pm

Had there been a black Stella before Carol Woods?