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LAUREN BACALL IN "GYPSY" ?

ChgoTheatreGuy Profile Photo
ChgoTheatreGuy
#1LAUREN BACALL IN "GYPSY" ?
Posted: 9/17/14 at 12:19pm

On Monday night, I watched "Private Screenings with Lauren Bacall" on TCM. Robert Osborne asked her about being in a Broadway musical, to which she replied it was always her lifelong dream. After she won the Tony for "Applause", why didn't she ever take a turn as Mama Rose in "Gypsy"?



Updated On: 9/18/14 at 12:19 PM

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lovebwy
#2LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 12:28pm

She should have done GYPSY it in 2002. She would have been the PERFECT age, according to all the people who want to see Streisand to it now.

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newintown
#2LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 12:28pm

The best reason may be because no one ever hired her to do it.

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ChgoTheatreGuy
#3LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 12:41pm

Hearing her sing in that clip from "Applause", I am sure that she would have become one of the legenadary Mama Roses in theatre history...

Gothampc
#4LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 12:43pm

I don't think she would be a good choice for Gypsy. I doubt she would have done it, but I always wanted to see her as Joanne in Company.


If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

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Jay Lerner-Z
#5LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 1:41pm

Maybe you should add a question mark to the thread title, otherwise some people who click on this will be disappointed having expected to see or hear about Lauren Bacall actually being in Gypsy at some stage.

Honestly, some people use seven and others use none...


Beyoncé is not an ally. Actions speak louder than words, Mrs. Carter. #Dubai #$$$
Updated On: 9/17/14 at 01:41 PM

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SweeneyLovett
#6LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 7:02pm

Her Joanne in Company would have been great. For some reason, I can't see her as Rose. She's always had a class about her that just wouldn't work for the character. I've always seen Rose as a woman who's incredibly common and vulgar. I'm also certain she couldn't have handled the score.

Phyllis Rogers Stone
#7LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 7:07pm

Is this a joke thread?

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Jay Lerner-Z
#8LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 8:23pm

One question mark would be sufficient, but thanks, I guess.


Beyoncé is not an ally. Actions speak louder than words, Mrs. Carter. #Dubai #$$$

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GavestonPS
#9LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 10:24pm

Exactly my question, Phyllis. Joanne in COMPANY, maybe, though I never saw Lauren Bacall allow anyone on stage take focus away from her. Joanne has to become part of the ensemble from time to time.

But Rose???!!! However would she have sung it? When did she ever play a member of the working class?

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promisespromises2
#10LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/17/14 at 10:54pm

You mean she was too Rainbow High?

LucyEth
#11LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/18/14 at 4:30pm

There was nothing common or vulgar about Angela Lansbury's Rose. She was classy and sexy and vulnerable and desperate...and utterly perfect.

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GavestonPS
#12LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/18/14 at 7:20pm

If that was addressed to me, Lucy, I have sung Lansbury's praises elsewhere. I worked with her on the first two productions after Broadway and she was perfection.

And despite pushing her daughter into burlesque, Rose's disapproval of Gypsy's "vulgarities" is noted in the script. I wasn't equating "working class" with vulgarity.

But Rose is ordinary, lower middle-class at best. She doesn't have the glamor that was so central to Bacall's public persona. This is not a criticism of either; I'm just saying the role is wrong for Bacall.

WOSQ
#13LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/19/14 at 2:06pm

Bacall could barely hit the notes in Applause and Woman of the Year and those shows were written for her. It would have been interesting to see her play the book scenes though.

My first Rose was a sort-of non-singer who did okay. Ann Sothern headlined a Music Fair production in about 1967. Sothern could hit the notes, but she couldn't sustain them.


"If my life weren't funny, it would just be true. And that would be unacceptable." --Carrie Fisher

Phyllis Rogers Stone
#14LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/19/14 at 2:34pm

The OP doesn't seem to have a grasp on reality.

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tazber
#15LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/19/14 at 3:10pm

How much would a cassette tape of the original cast recording from this show cost today I wonder.


....but the world goes 'round

Cuneas
#16LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/22/14 at 5:28am

Remember that Tyne Daly recording of Gypsy? Where an actress who was not vocally up to the role to begin with was trying to sing it while recovering from a case of laryngitis? If you put Bacall in the role immediately after Applause, as her relative vocal peak, Daly's recording would probably have sounded like Judy Garland compared to the inevitable result.

Bacall was a great actress...a _truly_ great one, but the fact is, she just point blank couldn't sing. And given the quality of her two Broadway star vehicles, I think everyone would have much happier if she had never tried musicals in the first place.

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GavestonPS
#17LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/22/14 at 12:52pm

Bacall wasn't a bad actress, certainly, but primarily she was a great STAR! And she came from the era when that was more important in a leading player than acting.

And for most of us, her star quality more than compensated for her lack of voice.

But she wasn't singing GYPSY, for Christ's sake!

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Mister Matt
#18LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/22/14 at 1:20pm

Bacall was a great actress...a _truly_ great one

Was she? I saw her Waiting in the Wings and she was SCHOOLED by the rest of the cast.


"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian

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Auggie27
#19LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/22/14 at 5:50pm

I'll be a bigger naysayer: She didn't have the acting range for Rose. Forget the singing. She really wasn't versatile. Her two musical Tonys were for roles created around her persona. I'm in the minority, I thought "Woman of the Year" was a far more accomplished musical comedy performance (mainly because the "Applause" score is so mediocre.) But she could be terribly arch. I thought she was fine in "The Fan," playing ... Bacall. The role really was Bacall. (Though she's kind of awful in the big denouement, when the writing really fails, so does she.) Rose demands a kind of core energy, and a considerable emotional range. Take one of the set pieces, the brilliant monologue Laurents wrote wherein Rose preps Gypsy for her first strip. It's a great actor's great scene, no music but underscoring. I can see Bacall flattening it, without the urgency. I write this having seen her give one of the most two-dimensional performances I've ever seen, in "Sweet Bird of Youth," in London. She was suprisingly uninteresting. It's a character she clearly should've nailed. Not a stretch in any way except in requiring a level of vulnerability -- of truly revealing, even exposing herself -- to another actor on stage. That's what Williams requires. She couldn't do it, and she gave what I called a "radio" performance. Intelligent sounding but devoid of a whiff of life's real pain. She didn't pull up her darkness. She indicated it. Margo and Tess didn't require Rose's darkness. And then when we add the music...


"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
Updated On: 9/22/14 at 05:50 PM

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theeatah
#20LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/22/14 at 8:20pm

There's a video on YT of Bacall doing a monologue from Sweet Bird of Youth at one of those Fundraiser revue/skit things from the late 90s. It's quite bad.

And in response to the post that Bacall never let anyone get the focus/attention on stage - didn't Marilyn Cooper basically own The Grass is Always Greener? Not that she wiped the floor with Bacall, who was mostly playing straight man to her, but Cooper got the most laughs.

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GavestonPS
#21LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/23/14 at 6:08am

^^^ I promise you Betty didn't GIVE the focus. Coopie knew how to TAKE it.

If you read the lyrics, it isn't even a particularly funny song. Coop made it a showstopper.

(Yes, I worked with both women and those are the names they went by in person.)

I worked on WONDERFUL TOWN with Bacall. I thoroughly enjoyed her, but, no, I never for a moment believed she was Ruth Sherwood or anyone other than Lauren Bacall.

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henrikegerman
#22LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/23/14 at 7:45am

Chgo, two questions:
Have you ever seen Gypsy? Have you ever seen Bacall?

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GavestonPS
#23LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/23/14 at 11:36pm

As long as I've dissed her yet again, I want to repeat that I saw Bacall in APPLAUSE from the very top row of the balcony. I really couldn't see much of her except the top of her platinum-haired head.

And even THEN she was thrilling! Great actress? No. But the lady had star power to spare!

I saw the show again a year later with Arlene Dahl as Margo. Dahl's performance seemed much more nuanced (or maybe I just had much better seats), but APPLAUSE was a pleasant show with Dahl. It was an EVENT with Bacall!

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alterego
#24LAUREN BACALL IN
Posted: 9/24/14 at 1:29am

Why didn't Lauren Bacall do GYPSY ? I doubt she could get through one performance singing it let alone 8 a week.