Sweet Charity Ending Question — Page 2

I saw a local production of Sweet Charity on Saturday night and had never seen it before. I knew it didn’t have a happy ending, and I gather there have been many different versions over the decades.

Here’s the one I got: Oscar breaks it off, Charity ends up in the lake, Oscar leaves, Charity gets out of the lake and sings ‘Where Am I Going?’ - not heard until then. That’s basically the ending of the show, aside from a version of ‘If My Friends Could See Me Now’ sang after the bows. There was no fairy. No reprise of ‘I’m the Bravest Individual.’

I have glanced at YouTube since getting home and saw various versions. This seems to be one of those shows where revivals and local productions choose their own ending.

I enjoyed the production and the actress who played Charity was wonderful. But there’s something that felt unearned about the unhappy ending. I gather that the source material was even darker.

I realize this is a Bob Fosse musical we’re talking about, but I’m not sure what purpose is served by the downbeat conclusion. It is perhaps more realistic, especially in the 1960s, and I understand that Charity is a resilient character who looks on the bright side even then. Still, there was a definite and off-putting sense that Charity kind of deserved to be punished because of her occupation - even though she is portrayed as a charming innocent.

I’m glad I saw the musical, which has much to recommend it - fine songs and performances, famous choreography, the hilarious elevator scene. But it’s a musical comedy! The ending feels unnecessarily sour.

I know, I know. I am complaining about a 1966 musical. It’s a revival. But it was new to me.

Updated On: 6/29/25 at 04:28 AM

Fosse always had the problem of not knowing how to end a show. The ending he came up with originally for Pippin was equally unsatisfying. The ending used now is better.

Even All That Jazz - he has his alter ego die from a heart attack because he refuses to make any changes & is still smoking etc while in the hospital for bypass surgery.

The film this musical is loosely based upon, Nights of Cabiria, is one of the greatest masterpieces ever made. It has the best ending in cinematic history.

Updated On: 7/3/25 at 09:58 AM

Something else I just thought about was that even when it originally played Broadway, you might get a different show on different nights because depending on how she was feeling Gwen Verdon would cut whole numbers from some performances.

Chita Rivera played Charity for the first tour, and still did select numbers from the show in her nightclub act when I saw that in 2014. It was a thrill.

Thanks for the clarification

TotallyEffed said: "The film this musical is loosely based upon, Night of Cabiria, is one of the greatest masterpieces ever made. It has the best ending in cinematic history."

You sir, have impeccable taste. Nights of Cabiria IS a masterpiece! A beautiful film with a heartbreaking performance by Guilietta Masina!

I don't mind the film's ending, maybe because that's the first version I ever saw. The flower children are a very idealized version of the hippie kids of the era. I always get a little thrill seeing Bud Cort, who shortly after appeared in MASH & then did the cult classic Harold & Maude with Ruth Gordon.

I like the final title card "She lived hopefully ever after " Would you really want her to end up with Oscar? He's such a shmuck.

I also don't mind Shirley MacLaine in the film version.

This film version is better than what happened with How to Succeed... where so many numbers were cut.

If you want to see a really strange 60's rom com, 1966's Promise Her Anything just received what I believe may be its first home video release with blu-ray of a new HD restoration by Paramount. Leslie Caron is a widowed single mother of a 1 or 2 year old who moves into an apartment in Greenwich Village (actually filmed in London) & Warren Beatty is a her next door neighbor - who films quickie porno movies ( pretty PG stuff is shown). She gets him to babysit while she pursues her child hating boss, & he finds success using the baby as a gimmick in his films. She goes a bit ballistic, but Beatty is charming so they live happily ever after. It's a real WTF? Actually surprised Paramount decided to spend the money restoring it. But Beatty has the same comic charm he later displayed in things like Shampoo & Heaven Can Wait.

Thanks for everyone’s replies. I knew the musical is based on Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, which I haven’t seen (but am now curious about).

Sweet Charity seems like a softened version of the film, but as a musical comedy, it upends expectations. Oscar may not be a prize, but as portrayed in the production I saw, he seems decent enough - and making improvements with Charity’s help. If anything, I thought Oscar - given his reluctance to kiss Charity - might be gay, or at least an offensive 1966 version of gay. But then I remembered it was a revival of a Broadway musical from that era, so that made no more sense than the odd hippies who were included and felt out of place.

Despite everything, I enjoyed the musical well enough, as several of the performances were quite good, including that of the actress who played Charity. I was rooting for her and thought she deserved better. I guess that’s how you are supposed to feel.

CarlosAlberto said: "TotallyEffed said: "The film this musical is loosely based upon, Night of Cabiria, is one of the greatest masterpieces ever made. It has the best ending in cinematic history."

You sir, have impeccable taste. Nights of Cabiria IS a masterpiece! A beautiful film with a heartbreaking performance by Guilietta Masina!"


Thank you, Carlos! What a special, special film. I cry every time.

The fairy ending sounds like a brilliant foil moment in keeping with Charity’s patterns of bad luck, and the two different audiences seems to enjoy the fairy ending in the auroraspiderwoman YouTube clip. A great Neil Simon gag!

Updated On: 7/4/25 at 09:37 PM

I am spending too much time thinking about this ending.

A couple of you, Mskuphantm and Jarethan, have made similar though not identical points about the ending. Mskuphantm argues that the conclusion, following the Fellini film, places the blame on Charity for winding up with the same sort of guy who treats her badly - same behavior, same bad outcome. Jarethan, you say Charity may remain hopeful but the audience knows that nothing is going to change. If I have unfairly characterized your points, please correct me.

But in the production I saw, the first boyfriend doesn’t say a thing and then tosses Charity in the lake while stealing her money. We don’t know this guy at all; he just seems like a bad person. The film star is actually rather sweet and just wants to reunite with his girlfriend. Oscar comes across as pathetic at first but seems to genuinely like Charity. Maybe he was portrayed differently in Broadway productions. He’s shaken by his discovery of her occupation but that doesn’t seem too bizarre given that she’s been lying to him. The only turn comes at the very end, when he says they can’t marry because he will always obsess about guys she’s been with. Oscar doesn’t steal from her or do anything worse. He just leaves her in the lake without bothering to help her to shore.

My question is: Why does Charity get a sad, almost punitive ending, even with the ‘hopefully ever after’ tagline? Concluding the show with ‘Where Am I Going?’ isn’t a terribly hopeful way to wrap things up. Is she just unlucky in love or is the musical suggesting that there is something wrong with Charity that will leave her perpetually doomed to ending up in the metaphorical or actual lake? Oscar seems like no prize at the end, but he had been improving until then with Charity’s assistance.

From what I understand of the Fellini film, the creatives were trying to follow that template while converting it into a musical comedy. But that sets up different expectations. I can see why subsequent revivals have tried to ‘fix’ the ending.

This isn’t like Chicago, in which Fosse’s cynical ending flows logically from the story. And it’s not like All That Jazz, which is an incredibly dark film that ends with a twisted but brilliant conclusion.

Sweet Charity just wants to end where it began, even though the character seems to have evolved. Maybe that’s the point, that nice people sometimes don’t get the happy ending we wish for them. It just felt oddly sour.

Updated On: 7/5/25 at 05:37 AM

The hippie rescue ending in the film, with some of the most scrubbed looking counter culture tribe members ever seen, is actually a nod to Nights of Cabiria, wherein Cabiria encounters a young group who dance, travel on mopeds, and behave with indifference to society. The message seems to be: step outside - move beyond - moral judgement for self-acceptance. Yet because the hippies are so egregiously sentimentalized - think teaching the world to sing in the Coke commercial - the sequence feels imbued with calculated artifice rather than an unbidden imprimatur by those outside of society.

But the problem with the adaptation is in the chasm between the world of a streetwalker and that of a dance hall hostess, a Depression era phenom already over by 1960s. Fosse's edit tries to have it both ways, inserting Oscar's POV shots of hands on Charity's body to suggest she's been "used" (up). But since we have no working knowledge of these hostesses and their boundaries - in a G-rated musical - we're left with the occupation merely coded for prostitution rather than a depiction of sex workers who try to exit the oldest profession. It becomes a commentary on women and sexist views of "promiscuity" without ever addressing it. At age 16 - and I loved the score and saw the show in London with Gretchen Wyler - I thought the ending was mystifyingly abrupt. It still fails to satisfy.

Updated On: 7/5/25 at 12:53 PM