New Book: From Broadway to Hollywood
This is not the first book on the subject of how Hollywood has treated Broadway musicals. Years ago, there was Broadway to Hollywood by Thomas G. Aylesworth, and not long ago I reviewed in this space Through the Screen Door by Thomas S. Hischak. Unlike those books, however, A Fine Romance concentrates on only a dozen properties. The concept is slightly confusing, as the first Sunset Boulevard, Applause and last The Producers, Hairspray chapters are about films that became Broadway musicals, while all the other chapters concern Broadway musicals that became films.
A Fine Romance is a lavishly illustrated, handsomely designed coffee-table-style book, in which the photos often contrast the identical moment in the stage and screen versions of a particular title. The photos are attractive, although many are familiar, and movie stills seem less necessary nowadays when one can easily acquire the actual films on video.
Denkert kicks off her study with an introductory chapter that begins in 1927, with the simultaneous arrival of Show Boat on Broadway and The Jazz Singer on film, with the latter talkie offering the first real screen competition to the theater. "What Broadway offers is creative freedom. What Hollywood offers is a guaranteed paycheck," notes Denkert. She traces the changes in the Broadway-Hollywood relationship from Busby Berkeley to the present, concluding with the Broadway transfer of the Disney films and the current craze for musicals based on movies.
Thereafter, each chapter concentrates on just one or two properties, offering a concise but fairly comprehensive and mostly accurate history of both the stage and film productions, while also attempting to point out the differences between the original and the movie version. In the first chapter, it's those two 1950, backstage, show-biz classics, both exploring "the dark side of stardom," Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve, with Denkert simultaneously tracing the development of the musical versions of both pictures. One notices immediately that, for those reasonably familiar with the history of film and stage play, there's nothing particularly surprising or new here, although I did appreciate Denkert's comment that Andrew Lloyd Webber failed to adequately musicalize Norma Desmond's closing mad scene.
For My Fair Lady, Denkert offers a fine summary of the history of the musical adaptation and the subsequent picture, revealing that Peter O'Toole was offered the Fair Lady film, but "Warner rejected his salary plus percentage of profits demand as excessive." She also reveals that Julie Andrews' Mary Poppins contract "had an escape clause that would have forced Disney to let her go if Jack Warner changed his mind at the last minute and agreed to give her Eliza's role."
She concludes that "there was little intrinsically cinematic about My Fair Lady on film," and she's similarly critical of West Side Story, quoting Arthur Laurents as saying, "The makers of the movie failed to find the style necessary to transmute the illusion of theater into the reality of celluloid." Denker also comments that the Jets in the picture are too clean-cut to look dangerous, and that the film's color palette is off "Where was the darkness?" She reveals that Marlon Brando toyed with the notion of playing Tony, but realized he was too old, and notes that Hollywood made Leonard Bernstein's score more palatable for general audiences by reorchestrating it with a large, string-heavy ensemble.
The film of Gypsy "substituted glitz for depth and gaiety for despair," with Rosalind Russell "too sophisticated and too beautiful to play the monster." And she also believes that having a major star like Natalie Wood as Louise reduced the dominance of Rose. Denkert again quotes Laurents, who says that Russell was completely wrong for the role given his negative comments elsewhere about Ethel Merman's Rose, it would seem that Laurents only approves of the Roses he himself directed. Laurents also states that the makers of the Gypsy film "never addressed the basic problem of how to transfer a musical from the stage to the screen."
Denkert is high on the Sound of Music film, though, calling it "the most creatively satisfying realistic cinematic adaptation of a Broadway show," and noting its "cinematic opening-up in its purest form." She also reveals that Doris Day "campaigned vigorously" for the role of Maria.
And there are similar raves for Cabaret, "the first major Broadway musical to be entirely reconceived for the screen in a manner that made the stage version seem not only tame, but a completely different piece of work." She does mention, however, that John Kander and Fred Ebb hated the film the first time they saw it, even if they did warm to it on a second viewing.
"A show ahead of its time becomes a movie perfect for its time" is her summation of the triumphant Chicago. Denkert supports Kander's contention that it ranks as "the best translation of theater to film that I'd ever seen."
The penultimate chapter is devoted to two Jerry Herman musicals that resulted in disappointing films. Of Hello, Dolly!, Denkert perceptively notes that the show was, "at its heart, a farce. Lavishing enormous sets on the widest of screens only served to highlight the silliness of the characters and the plot. What was a joyous romp on Broadway became leaden on film, drowned in all the realistic detail."
For the final chapter, it's two cult films that became musical-theatre smashes, The Producers and Hairspray. Denkert sees both as fine adaptations of their source films, and of course notes that both are to return to the screen as movie musicals. Denkert sees these two successes as the beginning of a trend: Referring to the Disney screen-to-stage hits, she asks, "If Broadway shows could be made from cartoons, was it possible to turn more 'adult' film properties into similarly effective, long-running, and money-making theatrical musicals on a regular basis?"
Denkert has written an intelligent and pleasantly readable overview of the subject. But for those already aware of the history of the stage shows and the history of the transfer from stage to screen of the properties, A Fine Romance isn't revelatory. There's not a lot of new material, with Denkert mostly repeating, in clear, concise fashion, well-known information and anecdote. So this study will probably be most useful as an introduction to the topic for those less familiar with it. And Denkert fails to go very deeply in analyzing the differences between the stage and screen versions of a property, choosing to concentrate on the respective histories of the stage and screen versions.
And there are a number of errors, some of which indicate that Denkert isn't all that familiar with the original Broadway versions of some of the titles. She gets the plot of the original Broadway Cabaret wrong; Cliff was not "a straight guy who dabbled," and Cliff and Sally's relationship was most definitely consummated. And her description of the original first-act finale is off, mixing it up with the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene in the film.
Denkert says that "Welcome to the Theatre" is the opening number of Applause it's at the end of the first act; that "Fosse and Verdon had been involved professionally since Fosse choreographed the 'Steam Heat' number in 'The Pajama Game'"; and that after the Broadway opening of Chicago, the musical "debuted some time later in London and was recognized by the press there as Fosse's most artistic theater work." London never saw Fosse's staging of Chicago.
She seems to think that The Most Happy Fella premiered in 1959, and calls Wonderful Town an early example of a musical based on a film it's taken directly from the hit Broadway play on which the film was based. Ed Sullivan never presented Rex Harrison in scenes from My Fair Lady, nor did Gwen Verdon do a number from Damn Yankees on Sullivan's show, at least not in the 1950s. Richard Gere did Grease in London, not on Broadway, and where did Uta Hagen earn raves playing Auntie Mame? There are also a number of misspelled or incorrect photo captions; for example, Gary Beach in the "Springtime for Hitler" number in The Producers is identified as Brad Oscar.