LAUREN BACALL IN "GYPSY" ?

She should have done GYPSY it in 2002. She would have been the PERFECT age, according to all the people who want to see Streisand to it now.

Hearing her sing in that clip from "Applause", I am sure that she would have become one of the legenadary Mama Roses in theatre history...

Maybe you should add a question mark to the thread title, otherwise some people who click on this will be disappointed having expected to see or hear about Lauren Bacall actually being in Gypsy at some stage.

Honestly, some people use seven and others use none...

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Updated On: 9/17/14 at 01:41 PM

Is this a joke thread?

Exactly my question, Phyllis. Joanne in COMPANY, maybe, though I never saw Lauren Bacall allow anyone on stage take focus away from her. Joanne has to become part of the ensemble from time to time.

But Rose???!!! However would she have sung it? When did she ever play a member of the working class?

There was nothing common or vulgar about Angela Lansbury's Rose. She was classy and sexy and vulnerable and desperate...and utterly perfect.

Bacall could barely hit the notes in Applause and Woman of the Year and those shows were written for her. It would have been interesting to see her play the book scenes though.

My first Rose was a sort-of non-singer who did okay. Ann Sothern headlined a Music Fair production in about 1967. Sothern could hit the notes, but she couldn't sustain them.

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How much would a cassette tape of the original cast recording from this show cost today I wonder.

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Bacall wasn't a bad actress, certainly, but primarily she was a great STAR! And she came from the era when that was more important in a leading player than acting.

And for most of us, her star quality more than compensated for her lack of voice.

But she wasn't singing GYPSY, for Christ's sake!

I'll be a bigger naysayer: She didn't have the acting range for Rose. Forget the singing. She really wasn't versatile. Her two musical Tonys were for roles created around her persona. I'm in the minority, I thought "Woman of the Year" was a far more accomplished musical comedy performance (mainly because the "Applause" score is so mediocre.) But she could be terribly arch. I thought she was fine in "The Fan," playing ... Bacall. The role really was Bacall. (Though she's kind of awful in the big denouement, when the writing really fails, so does she.) Rose demands a kind of core energy, and a considerable emotional range. Take one of the set pieces, the brilliant monologue Laurents wrote wherein Rose preps Gypsy for her first strip. It's a great actor's great scene, no music but underscoring. I can see Bacall flattening it, without the urgency. I write this having seen her give one of the most two-dimensional performances I've ever seen, in "Sweet Bird of Youth," in London. She was suprisingly uninteresting. It's a character she clearly should've nailed. Not a stretch in any way except in requiring a level of vulnerability -- of truly revealing, even exposing herself -- to another actor on stage. That's what Williams requires. She couldn't do it, and she gave what I called a "radio" performance. Intelligent sounding but devoid of a whiff of life's real pain. She didn't pull up her darkness. She indicated it. Margo and Tess didn't require Rose's darkness. And then when we add the music...

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Updated On: 9/22/14 at 05:50 PM

^^^ I promise you Betty didn't GIVE the focus. Coopie knew how to TAKE it.

If you read the lyrics, it isn't even a particularly funny song. Coop made it a showstopper.

(Yes, I worked with both women and those are the names they went by in person.)

I worked on WONDERFUL TOWN with Bacall. I thoroughly enjoyed her, but, no, I never for a moment believed she was Ruth Sherwood or anyone other than Lauren Bacall.

As long as I've dissed her yet again, I want to repeat that I saw Bacall in APPLAUSE from the very top row of the balcony. I really couldn't see much of her except the top of her platinum-haired head.

And even THEN she was thrilling! Great actress? No. But the lady had star power to spare!

I saw the show again a year later with Arlene Dahl as Margo. Dahl's performance seemed much more nuanced (or maybe I just had much better seats), but APPLAUSE was a pleasant show with Dahl. It was an EVENT with Bacall!