Dollypop, what can you tell us about 1974's Lorelei...

[ChrisLovesShows]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:16pm

...starring TGC? I’ve seen it called Lorelei: Gentlemen Still Prefer Blonds. Was this a revival of Gentlemen Prefer Blonds or a sequel? Or some other type of reworking of the original? Why the new title? The IBDB includes the statement “Based on the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" but also indicates that a “new book” was written. Scoop, please.

Updated On: 10/13/03 at 04:16 PM

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:30pm

i've heard it was a lot better (libretto-wise) than BLONDES. Anyone else ever seen it? after all, a show that has "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friends", "Little Girl from Little Rock," and "Anybody Here for Love?" has got to have a lot going for it. Did anyone see the 1995 revival of BLONDES with KT Sullivan?!?!

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:38pm

I didn't see it but I asked some who did. The recollection is that it was well, lets just say, misconceived. Sort of, Lorelei at age 50 decides to go back to Paris taking Dorothy with her. I have the album and have never quite heard it more than once.

I saw the KT Sullivan revival.

Buy and keep Channing's OBC. Buy Monroe & Russell on film. Between the two distinct versions you won't ever go wrong, and be very happy.

Yours for a better Broadway!

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:43pm

i always enjoyed the film. i've never seen it live at all.

[ChrisLovesShows]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:46pm

So it sound like it was more of a sequel.
{The OBC recording is being released on CD on October 28th.}

[MusicMan]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:46pm

Some LORELEI trivia: There were two original cast recordings of this production, virtually identical. One featured a drawing of Channing with yellow hair, the other with blue. If memory serves, the only distinction between the two recordings (other than the different hair color)was that the blue version contained a comedy song not available on the yellow version called "Men!" I suspect the song was added to the production later in the run (which wasn't very long), faux-justifying the need for another recording.

[tpdc]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:50pm

As I recall, it wasn't really a sequel. It was a framing device that allowed Channing to play Lorelei at 50. I think Comden and Green did freshen things up some. Wasn't Anyone Here for Love added just for Russell in the movie and isn't it by another composer?

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 4:55pm

i looked but couldn't find a complete score list for either stage version(s) or film. i do know "Men" that MUSICMAN mentioned is listed in the LORELEI idbd.com as being by another composer. Styne is credited a lot along with Comden & Green and some others, so perhaps the entire score was a compilation always. The character listings for the stage version(s) and film all list "member of the Olympic team" (which sounds like the guys from "Anyone Here for Love?") but that movie song could have replaced another song from the stage. Or the characters could have scenework and not be that chorus back-up as they were in the film.

[MusicMan]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 5:05pm

Interesting. "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" is by Harold Adamson and Hoagy Carmichael (which I had no idea till I looked it up just now)!
"Men!", according to the sheet music, which I own, is credited to Styne, Comden and Green. The music bears a lot of Styne's stylistic fingerprints so it's probably a safe bet to assume that it was written by him.

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 5:09pm

i seem to recall a Garland recording of the Hoagy song by that name. And i think it was in that STARDUST revue that headlined Betty B.

Posted: 10/13/03 at 5:42pm

Adamson and Carmichael also wrote "When Loves Goes Wrong" for the film version of GENTLEMEN.

For those of you interested in American popular music:
Hoagy also wrote "Skylark," "Georgia on My Mind," "Star Dust," "The Nearness of You," and many others.
Harold Adamson wrote: "Affair to Remember," "Around the World," too.

Just thought I'd throw that in.

Bulldog.

[EffieWhite]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 9:26pm

I did see it but didn't remember seeing until I read this board. But you are exactly right---there was a frame of an older Lorelei coming out to recall her story for us and then the rest of the show was just GENTLEMEN...I remember Tamara Long from DAMES AT SEA played Dorothy and the whole thing was cheap and bad.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 9:54pm

LORELEI was a mediocre show, saved only by TGC's performance and Peter Palmer's vocalizing. I saw it three times.

This was an attempt to give TGC an opportunity to reprise her Lorelei Lee character, but as someone said earlier in this thread, she was about 50 years old at the time--so the book was re-written to accommodate her age. Basically, the mature Lorelei was looking back on her life and writing her memoirs. The opening number, in fact, was "Looking Back". It was fairly faithful to GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES.

"Men" was a comic number that ended Act One and I recall that it was staged so that the curtain fell while TGC was still singing the last few bars of it and she crawled under the curtain to finish the number. Only TGC could pull something like that off. The number was also supposed to give Lorelei a more modern appeal because 70's audiences would think her to be a victim of sexism otherwise. I don't know if it worked.

Lets see...the show played at the PALACE Theater and ran for a little less than a year. Anything else?

[TxTwoStep]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 10:23pm

Peter Palmer of LIL ABNER fame?

[tpdc]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 10:27pm

Yes, the same Peter Palmer.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 10:35pm

Yup, and his rendition of "We're Just A Kiss Apart" was magnificent.

[tpdc]

Posted: 10/13/03 at 10:51pm

Looking in Theater World 1973/74, I see that the new book was by Kenny Solms and Gail Parent, it was choregraphed by Ernest Flatt (of the Carol Burnett show) and directed by Robert Moore. Also in the cast were Lee Roy Reems, Brandon Maggart and Dody Goodman.

[ChrisLovesShows]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 12:14am

Thanks for all the great scoop, guys! The CD is indeed being released on October 28th. I haven't seen a track list yet, but I'll post it when I do.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 8:08am

Arcane GPB film trivia:

The melody of the rhumba played in one shipboard scene is "How Blue the Night" written by Adamson & Jimmy McHugh for FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP (1944).

[Jaynrand]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 8:36am

Many years ago....I saw a production of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES with Miss Carroll Baker in the leading role.

She was a tiny little thing with a tiny voice - but by golly she was funny and a pretty good dancer.

Maybe she should take LORELEI out on the road now. 8-D

[WOSQ]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 11:03am

Oh there's a lot more to the Lorelei saga than is here already. I can't remember all the names but let me have a shot at it. This is all hazy since I was a mere slip of a lad and never saw the show although it was right around the time I moved to the Big City.

Lorelei toured for about a year before coming in. It was in trouble from the start. They had three directors: Robert Moore, Comden and Green for a while and then somebody else (Joe Layton?) or perhaps the forgotten #3 rehearsed the show and was replaced by C&G and then Moore. Anyway there was another choreographer too--also maybe Layton. The producers had to pay all these people except C&G only took their fee, but didn't ask for director royalties. They were getting some writing royalties anyway and their directing stint was just to keep somebody in charge during all the rewrites which were innumerable.

All the rewrites cost a lot of money and this is why the show which was designed to make its investment back on the pre-Broadway tour, did not. The NY reviews were enthusiastic for Carol, so-so for the show and after the advance sale played out, it limped along and ran about 10 months or so.

The song "Men" was done on the Tonys that year and was indeed very funny.

Post Bway there was a mini-tour at the Music Fair circuit since the producers owned those theatres, but after that zip, zilch, nada.

Someone I knew was cast in a featured dance role, but decided that she didn't want to be in a dog on tour for a year, so she got a doctor's letter saying she was injured or sick and got out of her contract. Still, her name was in the cast list on the first album which she found very amusing between sips of vodka gimlet.

I hope her name will be on this reissue. She died about 5 years ago and deserves many monuments whether she was in them or not.

There's plenty more about Lorelei that I can't recall. Anybody else remember tales?

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 11:15am

Jyan, Carrrol Baker is a mere 72 now. They would have to change the title to...Hmmm...GERIATRICS PREFER DEPENDS.

[Jaynrand]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 11:39am

Suleen - I think that's the title that June Allyson is using.

Saw Carroll a few weeks ago at a Courts show & she still looks great...as you say 72 (actually she was 73 last May)...Baby Doll she ain't anymore!

But she started on Broadway way back when and returned at least once (Come On Strong with Van Johnson!)

But as you say....but I betcha Betty would be up for a try!

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 2:53pm

Lorelei was on Broadway the year of Raisin, Over Here and Seesaw.....It was kind of a sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

It is mostly remembered for the act one ending when Ms. Channing's finger was still gloriously wagging under the fallen curtain:))

Carol Channing was Tony nominated along with Michelle Lee for Seesaw, but they lost best actress in a musical to Virginia Capers in Raisin.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/14/03 at 8:15pm

TEACH, whu=y is it that every one of your postings seems as thoug it was copied out of a textbook?