Combining Two Sources into One Show

[PTOPhan]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 10:40pm

I'm showing my age again, but when the "Mash" and "Catch 22" movies came out, people tended to mix them up. By the time "Mash" showed up as a TV series, most viewers probably had forgotten that the character Klinger (the cross dressing malingerer trying to get out by appearing crazy, except that going crazy during war is sane behavior, resulting in the infamous "Catch 22") appeared in the "Catch 22" movie, rather than the "Mash" movie.

I was just curious if anyone can think of a play or musical that uses multiple sources, either for the story itself, or to assemble the characters. "Into the Woods" doesn't count, because it's too obvious.

[Kad]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 10:45pm

I wouldn't say Klinger is a direct lift from Catch-22 at all.

Posted: 8/26/13 at 10:59pm

I don't remember a drag character in Catch-22 at all.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:04pm

SEUSSICAL uses several Dr. Seuss books.

The PETER PAN musical used both the stage play and the novel.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF was based on several short stories.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:11pm

It's been 40 years since I read the book, but as I recall it, the "Catch 22" had to do with flyers going on missions with high mortality rates.

(For example, just last night I heard the following figure: American flyers over Germany served a term of 25 bombing runs before being rotated to something else; but the average survival rate was only 16 missions. (American casualties were high because Americans took the daylight raids.))

The Catch 22 was that only a crazy person would fly with those odds, so acting crazy merely showed one was well qualified to fly.

Whether that was illustrated with a cross-dresser, I don't recall.

But the OP is right about this much: I am one who conflated the TV show and film of M*A*S*H: even though I've seen the movie dozens of times, I could have sworn Klinger was in it.

Updated On: 8/26/13 at 11:11 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:12pm

INTO THE WOODS is perhaps the most obvious example of a musical based on multiple sources, but one could say the same of ASSASSINS and PACIFIC OVERTURES.

[ARTc3]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:14pm

The obvious ones are:

Dancin
Fosse
Jerome Robbin's Broadway
all the jukebox musicals (I've lost count)
a whole lot of re-imagings of old musicals where they've added songs from other shows (I've lost count, but most recently, Cinderella)

and of course my favorite:

Dollies, the musical about the reunion of actress who all played Dolly Levi. (No, this doesn't really exist, but its a personal joke.)

[Kad]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:19pm

Durang's "A History of the American Film" is this to a T. It's just stock characters woven together with familiar plot events and peppered with famous lines/scenarios.

[ARTc3]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:22pm

Kad, Wow! I loved that show. Saw it twice. Took my family the second time and they totally didn't get it. At the time, I don't think I had seen anything funner than, We're In a Salad.

Thank you for triggering the fond memory.

Updated On: 8/26/13 at 11:22 PM

[Dollypop]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:23pm

GODSPELL. Although it purports to be based on St. Matthew's Gospel, it actually draws from the other three Gospels and the Book of Psalms as well.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:24pm

You forgot to mention that St. Matthew told you that, personally.

[philly03]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:26pm

ALW's Woman in White, though I don't think they give credit to the latter:

Wilkie Collins' Woman in White and Charles Dickens' The Signal-man

[SNAFU]

Posted: 8/26/13 at 11:30pm

Ha, if we were talking about Film, Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid come sto mind.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/27/13 at 12:03am

The Apple Tree
The Good Doctor
Guys and Dolls
A Thurber Carnival
Fanny
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Romance/Romance

(In several of these, the multiple sources are from the same author)

[NoName3]

Posted: 8/27/13 at 1:43am

South Pacific. The source material, James Michener's book Tales of the South Pacific, is not a novel; it is 19 separate short stories, related by time, setting, a few recurring characters and a plot element of a war operation. But all the stories stand independently of each other.

R&H were first attracted to the story "Fo' Dolla" which is the the story of Cable, Liat and Bloody Mary. According to Rodgers' autobiography they stopped work when they realized their material was little more than a rehash of Madama Butterfly. At Rodgers' insistence, the team had earlier licensed not only Fo' Dolla but all the stories and they went back to the book looking for other material. They settled on "Our Heroine," the story of de Becque and Nellie, with Mary Martin in mind for Nellie. Shortly later, Ezio Pinza was offered to them if they had anything appropriate for him in the works and indeed they did.

After developing Our Heroine, Hammerstein realized that he could combine the stories of Cable/Liat and de Becque/Nellie. In the book the two couples never meet nor interact. Other plot elements, for example, the coast watch operation which Hammerstein gives to de Becque and Cable, were lifted from yet other stories in the book.

So although the bulk of the material in the musical does derive from Michener's book, it took the skill of Oscar Hammerstein (with an assist from Joshua Logan) to combine the disparate characters and plot elements from multiple stand alone stories into the cohesive whole that is the South Pacific we know today.