To Bare on Not to Bare (NBC's Hair Live Issue)

I went to see a junior high school's production of Hair, and was disappointed for the same reason...

When HAIR was first done at the Public, there was no nudity. When Tom O'Horgan took over as director, he had nudity to shock the Broadway audience!

I saw Hair during its original run and any voyeurs who attended would have demanded a refund. I was about two thirds back in the orchestra and try as I might, I couldn’t identify anyone as nude.

That show was most special in all the pop hits that came from the score. And don’t recall hearing anything from Rado/Ragni (sp) again.

ggersten said: "I recall hearing Ben Vereen say that nudity was optional each night - but you got an extra $10 if you stripped."

The extra payment is correct. My mentor in grad school was part of the stage management team on the original production and he always told us that one of his duties was to literally stand in the wings with a check list to see who got naked that night to make sure everyone was paid properly.

I can remember when I first saw Hair in Sydney way back when that I was so scared about what I was going to see, live, in front of me, on stage.

What a disappointment. I was looking for dick and there was always a head, or body in the way--and over too soon---talk about a 'come' down !

I saw a quite good local production last night of Sweet Charity. 'The rhythm of life' was done very hippy style with male and female all stripping down to their underwear. In that period there were no Aussie Bum undergarments so the jocks were not that sexy even though the bods. were. You certainly don't need a swingin' dick to make a scene sexy.

So strip down to underwear and show off those pectorals I say.

I think it time for a more mature Charity who can still dance, like Caroline O'Connor and update it to the present---it would work, not the Fandango Ballroom but Gentlemans' Pleasure.

HAIR's nude scene has always been the very essence of the word "gratuitous." (And I don't say that because I objected to it.)

But it won't be missed. "The internet is for porn," as the saying goes.

^ Kind of blows the Claude/Sheila/Berger triangle to smithereens... that's one of the few threads of plot in the show one can easily follow.

The nude scene has never been essential to the show. Indeed, a lot of newer productions frequently cut it. Plus, it was always open to change. As ggersten and AEA point out, not all of the cast ever had to participate, and it was never locked down into a single scene; though most productions placed it in the classic "Where Do I Go" spot, the run in Acapulco -- that only lasted one night due to blow-back from Mexican authorities -- put it in the "Walking in Space" scene, and an early draft of the final film proposed it as part of the concluding protest scene, a term I use loosely, on the White House lawn, with paint being distributed and crosses painted on everyone's chests, sort of a human Arlington, an image I've always liked that I might steal if I ever direct the show some day.

My (admittedly probably vain) hope is that NBC will see how well censorship worked for Rent on Fox (which is to say, not at all), and they'll push enough boundaries for us to at least get some bleeps and blurs instead of outright whitewashing. But I doubt it.

Updated On: 1/30/19 at 09:14 AM

They can easily keep the dialogue intact on these things and just bleep the curse word. Many shows on ABC (THE GOLDBERGS, BLACK-ISH, SPLITTING UP TOGETHER, etc) are flooded with curse words and used freely, they just bleep and pixalate the lips. This keeps the tone and essence without using some unrealistic word.

All “live” broadcasts have a 7-second delay so they have enough time to do all of the above, especially as the camera blocking is already outlined in advance so camera choices can be pre-planned for certain inappropriate moments.