Bye Bye Birdie: Rose Grant vs Rose Alvarez

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 4:27pm

Just trivia, but does anyone know exactly when and why the name of Chita's character was changed? I've seen both used over the years and thought a google search might might shed some light but it didn't really. The show first opened on Broadway with Chita listed as Rose Grant in April 1960.

Rose Grant:
1960 original production Playbill at Playbill Vault
1960 IBDB listing, including 1961 Gretchen Wyler replacement cite as Grant
1960 OBCR liner notes and later CD re-issues reflecting same
1961 London cast recording with Chita, see BWW database link below
Tams Witmark 1966 catalog (five years after Broadway closing)

Rose Alvarez:
2009 revival at Playbill Vault
Wikipedia
Tams Witmark website currently

Wikipedia states that the part of Rose was turned down by Carol Haney and Edie Gormé and that the name was changed when Chita then accepted the role. But the original Playbill and the album liner notes make it clear it must have happened later, after the show opened. Why?

Does anyone know another case of a major character's name being changed *after* a show has opened?



Updated On: 2/8/15 at 04:27 PM

[gleek4114]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 4:32pm

I'm not really sure, but for the 60s movie it was changed to Rose Delieon (sp?).

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 4:40pm

Close, gleek. Janet Leigh played her as Rosie DeLeon in the first film version.

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 04:40 PM

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 4:47pm

The story I've heard it that Chita suggested the name be changed to something that would better suit "Spanish Rose"'s ethnicity. But I did not hear it from Ms. Rivera so can't attest to its veracity.

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 5:10pm

I've always assumed it was something like that, Wilmingtom, but I've always wondered about the details since you can still find both names out there, for instance in the CD liner notes. As I said it is unusual for a change like that to happen after a show is open and a hit. I just checked the program for the first production I saw, at Wake Forest College (now University) in 1962, and the character is listed as Rose Grant. (I've kept that college production program all these years because it was the first live production of a musical I ever saw in a theater.)

And while digging that out of the closet, I found an old Tams Witmark catalog from 1966 that lists the character as Rose Grant which means the name change must have happened officially sometime after that -- long after the show had closed on Broadway. Curiouser and curiouser as Mr. Carroll said.

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 05:10 PM

[LarryD2]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 5:29pm

Take this with a grain of salt, but I seem to remember reading or hearing somewhere that the character was originally envisioned as Polish (hence: Grant), and changed once Chita was hired.

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 5:37pm

Yes, that makes perfect sense and Wikipedia says the name change occurred at the time Chita was hired. But that's also obviously wrong as Playbill Vault shows she was actually playing the part as Rose Grant at least as late as the New York opening and, as I posted above, Tams Witmark was licensing the show as late as 1966, five years after the show closed on Broadway, with the character listed as Grant. So exactly when did the change happen officially and why so late in the show's production history?

As I said up top, it's trivia, but something I've wondered about for decades at this point, maybe because the first time I saw the show the character was called Grant, a year after it closed on Broadway. I guess I'm very officially an old now.

Updated On: 2/8/15 at 05:37 PM

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:13pm

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 10:13 PM

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:31pm

So above is the page from the original production Playbill at Playbill Vault showing that Chita opened the show at the Martin Beck Theater in April 1960 as Rose Grant and presumably played it in out-of-town tryouts the same way. This invalidates Wikipedia's claim that the character's name was changed at the time Chita was cast.

More to come, as I've found interesting clues as to when the change occurred but nothing conclusive. I suspect it happened before the show was licensed to Tams Witmark but that they were sent original production materials that didn't include the change and that either nobody noticed the change was not included and/or nobody considered it worth either the time and effort or else the expense to make the change after the licensed material was already being being sent out.

Updated On: 2/8/15 at 10:31 PM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:37pm

This is interesting but it makes absolutely no sense to me that a character with the last name of "Grant" would even be singing a song like "Spanish Rose". Grant is clearly not a Spanish last name.

More interesting to me though is the cast of teenagers listed in the playbill. Louis Quick (she was a "Cabaret" girl in the 1972 film of CABARET), Karin Wolfe, who in 1973 landed the title role in the 1973 Broadway production of Lerner and Loewe's GIGI and Lada Edmund who went on to greater fame as Lada St. Edmund, the go-go dancer in a cage on the television dance series HULABALOO. She also replaced Donna McKechnie in the role of Vivien Della Hoya in PROMISES, PROMISES and became a personal trainer and the highest paid stuntwoman in Hollywood.

[JohnyBroadway]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:39pm

Could it be when Vanessa Williams played the role?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:53pm

The introductory verse explains it all.



Bye Bye Birdie Chita Rivera Spanish Rose

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 10:53 PM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 10:59pm

That she was born in Far Rockaway? That explains where she was born is all. It still doesn't explain why her last name is Grant.

Wasn't the original lyric "Allentown, P.A."...what's up with the change to Far Rockaway?

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 11:01pm

Oh and to add even more confusion to the mix, in the song she clearly states in a put-on heavy Spanish accent: "Me name's Rosita Hernandez". So which is it? Grant, Alvarez or Hernandez?



Updated On: 2/7/15 at 11:01 PM

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 11:03pm

"This is interesting but it makes absolutely no sense to me that a character with the last name of "Grant" would even be singing a song like "Spanish Rose". Grant is clearly not a Spanish last name."

Absolutely true and it gives a good explanation as to why the name was eventually changed. The part evidently wasn't conceived as a person of Hispanic heritage; Wikipedia says Chita got the part only after Carol Haney and Eydie Gormé passed and I can only assume that Chita's casting then influenced how the part was developed and written. LarryD2 says he remembers reading or hearing Rose was originally to have been Polish.

My curiosity is therefore not so much as to why the change occurred but exactly when it first happened and why licensed productions years after Broadway still listed the part as Rose Grant.

I can't find an official cast list for the first London production in 1961 but I've found two different mentions (a text description of the cast in a program listing at eBay, an OLCR customer review at Amazon) that refer to Chita playing Rose Grant in that production.

Meanwhile, I've found a cast list for the first national tour going out in 1961 with the part as Rose Alvarez but I don't know how much to trust the website as it gives no source for the cast list. Years later, Tams Witmark was still licensing the show with Rose Grant. Why?

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 11:03 PM

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 11:08pm

The number "Spanish Rose" has not aged very well and it required quite a bit of a lyric overhaul for the 1995 television version. Vanessa Williams' "Rose" was "Rose Alvarez". So her "Rose" was definitely a dark skin Hispanic or a "mulatta".

In the original production I'm guessing that the line "My handsome latin lover from the Bronx" was supposed to generate a laugh due to that borough's ethnic makeup at that time. That line clearly does not work at all in this day and age.

Updated On: 2/7/15 at 11:08 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/7/15 at 11:52pm

It was supposed to get a laugh because the Bronx was where the Jews, Italians and Irish lived. (A similar joke to the 1920s song "She's a Latin from Manhattan," in which the punchline was "Senorita Donahue.")

Now the Bronx is where many, many handsome Latins live, and Albert is not Latino so why would Rosie say that?

It's too bad the song has aged badly, because the choreography is thrilling.

[Alan Henry]

Posted: 2/8/15 at 1:10am

I can confirm the lyrics was sung originally as Allentown PA. (It's like that on the OBCR as well.)

And having done the show in 2010 - it was in the licensed materials at the time.

They may have changed it just for Ed Sullivan.

[NoName3]

Posted: 2/8/15 at 1:37am

Chita Rivera listed as Rose Grant in the original cast recording of the 1961 London production at the Broadway World International database:

https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwidb/sections/audio/index.php?var=65547

So when did Grant officially become Alvarez? And why so long after Chita had originated the part?

Updated On: 2/8/15 at 01:37 AM

[Rinaldo]

Posted: 2/8/15 at 10:32pm

I can confirm that in the first national tour the role (played by Elaine Dunn) was Rose Alvarez. I saw it in Chicago in my teens, and as I was familiar with the OBCR, I was surprised at the different name.

I have a dim memory of an article explaining the change of name (it seems like the sort of small point Ken Mandelbaum liked to clear up, but even if it was indeed by him, I don't recall if it was online or in one of the magazines he contributed to). The idea was that when Rivera played the role, the character's Hispanic heritage needed no further underlining -- especially as it's a plot point that she herself cares little about it and is annoyed by Mae's emphasis on it (we can imagine that it perhaps derives from her mother, thus is not reflected in her surname). But when a Gretchen Wyler or Elaine Dunn played the part, her Hispanic identity was felt to be a point that would benefit from being reinforced, not just by her makeup and wig, but by a suitable surname. That's how I remember it anyway.

[mamaleh]

Posted: 2/9/15 at 1:25am

I remember Lada Edmund being billed on "Hullaballoo" as Lada Edmund, Jr. I guess she added that between BIRDIE and the teen show?

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/9/15 at 5:49am

I'm still trying to figure out why in the song "Spanish Rose" she refers to herself as Rosita HERNANDEZ and not ALVAREZ...or even GRANT.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 2/9/15 at 10:53am

Since the name wasn't Alvarez originally, I'm guessing that for the song that wanted her to refer to herself with a stereotypical sounding Hispanic name and chose Hernandez.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/9/15 at 10:59am

Could be. Still trying to figure out why she had the last name Grant to begin with.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 2/9/15 at 11:12am

What Rinaldo said made sense, I thought. Perhaps when Chita was playing Rose, she was only Hispanic on one side, like Chita herself. Chita looks Hispanic and has a Hispanic name, so there was no reason to have to give Rose a particularly Hispanic sounding name.

Updated On: 2/9/15 at 11:12 AM