Happy 50th Anniversary to CABARET!

Beautiful photographs Mr. Nowack.

The show is one of my all time favorites and the Original Broadway Cast album is my favorite out of all the recordings that have been done.

I have a question for those who were fortunate enough to see the original production. I notice in some production photos that the actress playing "Sally" - Jill Haworth - is sporting blonde hair in some photos, while in others she is sporting a black wig.

I thought that maybe she donned the wig for her cabaret scenes and took it off for the book scenes, but from the photos shared here I see that in some of them she is wearing the same outfit in one photo but in some she has the wig on and in others she doesn't.

Did she start out in the production with her natural blonde hair and then later on was it decided to give her a wig?

Lol! I'd been planning to make this thread for months! It just slipped my mind... Well, I ADORE Cabaret. It's such a brilliant show! I've never seen it live but I've seen the DONMAR recording and I've listened to the albums (all of them) and have also seen the movie. It's so wonderful. I love, love, love it!!!

I saw it several times -- you could get rear mezzanine seats for $2.00 for the entire run of the show -- early in the engagement, and I really don't remember her ever being a blonde (given 50 years, that doesn't mean that she wasn't). Jill Haworth was a very pretty blonde, so I remember not liking her as a brunette (heck, I was 15). Interested to find out the real answer.

I was 15 too when I saw the show but when I bought tickets at the box office for the last two weeks of August I had the choice of either seeing the show during Haworth's vacation off from the production or Lenya's. I chose to see Lenya because I figured I'd never have the opportunity to see her live in a show again (a mistake because she walked through the role during that matinee performance). Instead of Haworth, I saw Penny Fuller who was a fine Sally Bowles and IIRC had the same hair color throughout the show.



However I was always curious as to how well Haworth played the role. I always liked her voice on the cast recording. I recall Walter Kerr's damning review of her stating, “ ‘Cabaret’ is a stunning musical with one wild wrong note,” naming Ms. Haworth as the clunker and calling her “a damaging presence, worth no more to the show than her weight in mascara.” That snide remark unfortunately gained a lot of repeating at the time. As for her hair color in the show, in her NY Times' obit it states, "....A petite, strikingly pretty blonde (she wore a dark wig on Broadway)". So I Imagine that during rehearsals and early promo photos they weren't quite sure to go with Haworth as a blonde or brunette finally going with the dark wig.



I do recall having good orchestra seats which allowed us to see the audience reflected from these glossy mylar silver panels angled at the back of the stage. The creators wanted to let the audience know that we were a reflection of mankind during the atrocities of the Nazi regime. However I don't recall if Grey used the line, "She wouldn't look Jewish at all" at the end of "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes." From what I recall he would sometimes say it regardless of Prince's objection.

Despite Jill Haworth's terrible review from the Times, i thought she was very good in the role, and did a bang-up job on the title number. Even as a kid, I wondered if he just had Julie Harris on his mind and nothing else would do; OR didn't like her from all those Preminger movies; OR did I not realize at 15 that she was not good.

I did see Penny Fuller and I thought she was very good in the role, if not as good as Haworth.

I remember Joel Grey singing 'She isn't a Meeskite at all', as in the album. I saw the show 5 times with Joel Grey, and his performance was to me remarkably consistent.

"Prophet of doom" seems to me to be Cliff, who -- not even a scene before -- was insisting she needed to come with him and leave Germany because things were about to go to hell in a handbasket.

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: ""Prophet of doom" seems to me to be Cliff, who -- not even a scene before -- was insisting she needed to come with him and leave Germany because things were about to go to hell in a handbasket.



Oh...you know, that does makes a lot more sense. I hadn't thought of it before.

I have to re-read the printed libretto again. It's such a well written adaptation from it's excellent source material.

Thank you for taking the time to reply.