Unrecorded Flops Song List - # 1 Rachel Lily Rosenbloom

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/22/06 at 10:05pm

Recently, I had mentioned a show that bombed & a person answering asked me to post a list of the musical numbers from it. Someone else had a similar request for the same thing from a different show

Today, I went over to my storage space & grabbed a handful of old playbills. The following is a list of musical numbers from bombs that were never recorded. In the future, each one will be listed separately as "Song List # & the name of the show.

The first show is "Rachel Lily Rosenbloom & Don't You Ever Regret It". It played the Broadhurst & the album was to have been done by RSO Records

Music & Lyrics Paul Jabara . Choreographic Supervision Grover Dale & Choregraphy by Tony Stevens. Swings were listed as Swing Girl & Swing Boy. The swing boy was Wayne Cilento

Act 1

Academy Awards Theme
Dear Miss Streisand
Delivery Boys Lament
Me & My Perch
Georgeous Lily
Get Your Show Rolling
Hollywood! Hollywood!
East Brooklyn Blues
Broadway Rhythm
Hollywood Is Dying
Broadway I Love You
Ramond's Song
Seduction Samba
Rona, Mona & Me
Working For Stella
Silver Dollar Rhinestone Glasses
Party Sickness
Take Me Savage
Overdose
Get Your Show Rolling - Rep

Act 2

Academy Awards Theme
Change In Raquel
Raquel Gives The Dish
Georgeous Lily - rep
Ochos Rios
Cobra Woman
Things
One Man
We'll Be There
One Man - Rep
Broadway Rhythm - Rep
We'll Be There - Rep

Dec 1973 - Tricolor Playbill - Top Price For A Little Night Music $ 13

[Flahooley]

Posted: 4/22/06 at 11:47pm

I've often heard of the show... what was it about?... didn't Ellen Greene star?

[temms]

Posted: 4/23/06 at 3:34am

I've looked into this one (wasn't around when it happened, literally) - it's a way-campy rags-to-riches story of a girl from Brooklyn obsessed with Barbra Streisand who becomes a movie star and later a gossip columnist. It began with Rachael (adding the "a" Barbra dropped) winning an academy award, but she's backstage in a dressing room coked up where she reminisces about her rise to the top from the Fulton Fish Market. She's visited by a fairy godmother, and then becomes an intern or something to an agent (I think) who was played by Anita Morris. I don't really remember. It didn't make a lot of sense, it was a lot of scenes that were parodies of old Hollywood "Star Is Born"-type stuff, but with a seventies twist (she sees a progressive psychotherapist at one point, I think). I read a version of the script and at one point heard a tape of it. I'd say the score is in a similar vein as "Applause", but even more tacky mid-seventies (which I kind of love). Some traditional Broadway stuff, a lot of very seventies production numbers. I think Jabara recycled a couple of the songs as disco tunes.

By the time the show closed (before the official opening) it had been trimmed down to one act and a lot of the songs listed above were cut. I don't know - I think it might actually be kind of worth taking a look at again. I found the script (a version of it) in the sub-basement research archive of the NYU library, which also has such oddities as "More Than You Deserve" by Jim Steinman and Michael Weller and a very early version of "Via Galactica" when it was still a terrible book show.

But "Rachael" is easily far more interesting than "Last Dance", the Jabara disco jukebox musical I saw a workshop of last fall. I'd think if people are willing to throw money behind a Jabara project, "Rachael" would be far more worthwhile and probably have about the same odds of success, all things considered.

Updated On: 4/23/06 at 03:34 AM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/23/06 at 9:53am

Greene was in it & I guess mercifully I remember nothing of it

[WOSQ]

Posted: 4/24/06 at 1:27pm

I remember a smoke effect that made such dense smoke that one couldn't see the dancers dancing. They moved laterally into the fog and were gone, but I am fairly sure they kept dancing as if they were supposed to be visible. They danced out the other side of the smoke.

I remember being entertained for the first three scenes and then the bottom falling out as if that was where they stopped rewriting. There was no interval by this point.

I remember Anita Morris' character's name, "Stella Star****ov" .(I'm not making this up you know.)

I remember it being laughably off the mark.

Ellen had to do most of the heavy lifting and she went down fighting.

I saw it the Friday night and it was gone after the weekend.

What were they thinking?

[Unknown User]

Posted: 4/24/06 at 3:34pm

I beleive it was originally concieved as a vehicle for Bette Midler and was the brainchild of Paul Jabara-- composer of "It's Raining Men." RSO put up the money as reward for all Jabara's work as the studio genius behind so many RSO hits.
It is discussed in "Not Since Carrie."

[WithoutATrace]

Posted: 4/24/06 at 3:39pm

Oh how I wish I could hear this score...

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 4/24/06 at 4:45pm

Thank you so much for posting this, Mr Roxy! I was the one indeed to ask you for a song list... sounds so interesting. Damn, I'd give my right arm to hear this score/ see a recording of the show!