CHICAGO 2002

For me, the history of CHICAGO  has always been inextricably linked with that of A Chorus Line. CHICAGO premiered on Broadway on June 3rd, 1975; A Chorus Line, six weeks later, on July 25th. CHICAGO opened to mixed reviews and struggled at the boxoffice; A Chorus Line was met with raves, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. CHICAGO was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, won 0; A Chorus Line was nominated for 12, won 9.

CHICAGO and A Chorus Line also happen to be linked together in my memory. Certainly, I remember that day in August of 1975 when I went to The Gramophone, a gay-owned and operated record store on San Francisco's Polk Street, and purchased the Original Broadway Cast Recording LPs of both shows. Although I hadn't yet heard a single note from either score, I was so fired up from consuming all the After Dark Magazine-fed hype surrounding the opening of each production (that invaluable, homoerotic, national entertainment magazine being my sole West Coast pipeline to what was happening on Broadway), that I was almost smug in my confidence that my two blind purchases were far from being a gamble. 

August 5, 1975 - $4.88 each
Both were single LPs in glossy gatefold jackets loaded with photos & liner notes

Given that Broadway musicals don't crop up with the regularity of movies, the appearance of the highly-anticipated shows was quite a big deal to me. Before CHICAGO & A Chorus Line captured my imagination, the last Broadway cast album I'd purchased was Sondheim's A Little Night Music, a musical meal I'd been dining out on since 1973. Having committed every note and melody of that splendid score to memory by then, I could scarcely believe my good fortune that 1975 held forth the promise of TWO major Broadway musical releases I could submerge myself in. 

Back in the day, all the smart money was on CHICAGO. The only familiar names A Chorus Line boasted were composer Marvin Hamlish, then all but unavoidable after his recent Oscar win for The Sting (1973), and director-choreographer Michael Bennett, whose name was familiar to me from the liner notes of the library-borrowed cast albums of Company and Follies. CHICAGO distinguished itself as the musical with the Broadway heavy hitters and showbiz pedigree. It marked the Broadway musical return of Gwen Verdon (her last Broadway musical was 1966's Sweet Charity)! The professional reunion of husband & wife collaborators Verdon & Fosse! The reteaming of Fosse with his Cabaret and Liza with a Z collaborators: the composer-lyricist-writing duo of John Kander and Fred Ebb! And best of all, CHICAGO marked the first-time pairing of two genuine Broadway legends…Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera!

Illustration by Sam Norkin -1975

Wanting to start with the "sure thing," I listened to the CHICAGO album first, which became one of those rarer-than-rare occurrences where one's extraordinarily high expectations are met and exceeded. Hearing that incredible score for the first time...every single song a showstopper...not a clunker in the bunch...was such a thrill. The songs and their often hilarious lyrics set my imagination on fire... I could practically see the entire production in my head. I was instantly attracted to the storyline--the phoniness of show biz reflecting the phoniness of the American legal system. And if the cynicism at CHICAGO's core struck me as caustic and pessimistic, consider that I was just 17 at the time (sarcasm and snark are like crack cocaine to a teenager) and that it was the summer of '75. The summer that saw the dynamic downer duo of Nashville and The Day of the Locust released to movie theaters just weeks before. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. CHICAGO was simply riding the crest of the zeitgeist. 

May 6, 1976

That's Jane Fonda speaking at a Tom Hayden rally in Sacramento and 18-year-old me in this, the only photo I have of my beloved official CHICAGO T-shirt I wore for years until it disintegrated. An image captured mere moments before Ms. Fonda graciously signed the Barbarella photo I've got secreted away in the book you see tucked under my arm (The Busby Berkeley Book). The memo is an affirmative reply to my written request to NY's 46th St. Theater inquiring about the possibility of purchasing a CHICAGO T-shirt (mail-order Broadway merchandise was yet to be a thing). It cost a whopping $5 plus $1 shipping. 

Next, I listened to A Chorus Line, optimistically resigned to the certainty that it couldn't match my CHICAGO experience. Jump ahead several hours. Me on the floor in front of the family stereo, headphones on, in a theater geek's state of transcendence, eyes red and nose runny from listening to A Chorus Line three times in a row and bawling my eyes out. 

And there you have what was then, and continues to be, the essential link in my relationship with CHICAGO and A Chorus Line. They're culturally joined at the hip for me. Iconic templates of a particular time and place in my life--I'd graduated high school in June, I'd been "out" to myself for about two years (4 more years to go for family), it was the summer of Jaws, it was the summer of my independence. And these two shows, listened to as regularly and relentlessly as though they were on a loop, were the soundtrack of my adult-adjacent freedom. 

June 7, 1976
I saw A Chorus Line when the National Company came to San Francisco's
 Curran Theater in May. Ever the autograph hound, my friend and I became
stage-door Johnnies for the show's entire run

But CHICAGO was always the diamond…sharp, dazzling, and cold, while A Chorus Line was always the heart (a vision of Lauren Bacall singing "Hearts, Not Diamonds" in The Fan just popped into my head). To me, A Chorus Line was a dark, almost melancholy show... a Follies for theater gypsies...but unlike CHICAGO, it was humane and compassionate. And that made listening to it a poignant and exhilarating experience—all goosebumps and waterworks. Each musical, reflecting as they did, opposite yet equally valid faces of our culture (post-Watergate disillusionment & "Me Generation" introspection), also appealed to the contrasting sides of my own nature. CHICAGO and A Chorus Line complemented one another. 

It wasn't until 1992 that the opportunity arose for me to actually see a production of CHICAGO on stage for the first time. The Long Beach Civic Light Opera put on a fabulous, faithful-to-the-original production starring Juliet Prowse and Bebe Newerth, utilizing Tony Walton's original set designs, Patricia Zipprodt's costuming, and featuring two members of the original 1975 cast. It was astoundingly good. This may explain why I was never very fond of the pared-down, anachronistically costumed look of CHICAGO's phenomenally successful 1996 Broadway revival. An antipathy reinforced when I saw a 2012 production starring Christie Brinkley (by this point, stunt-casting was the only teeth the show had left).

Since 1975, A Chorus Line's cultural grip has weakened a bit. Thanks to a monumentally mishandled 1985 movie adaptation and the musical's once-innovative confessional format feeling almost quaint in the modern climate of social media oversharing. Meanwhile, CHICAGO, a show once criticized for its relentlessly downcast gaze into life's sewers, has hung around long enough for its down-in-the-gutter perspective (I hear Candy Darling in Women in Revolt "Too low for the dogs to bite!") to be precisely eye-level with what mainstream American culture has come to normalize, reward, and elect.   

And something happened that, for the longest time, I had given hope of ever seeing...after decades of false starts and empty rumors (Liza and Goldie! Goldie and Madonna!), and against impossible odds (non-animated movie musicals were given the death knell) CHICAGO, at last, had been made into a movie. Twenty-seven years after its Broadway debut. 

Renee Zellweger as Roxie Hart

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly

Richard Gere as Billy Flynn

Queen Latifah as Matron Mama Morton

John C. Reilly as Amos Hart

CHICAGO, the Bob Fosse/Fred Ebb/John Kander musical vaudeville about two amoral, overaged, gin-soaked jazz babies on murderers' row, desperate to parlay their 15-minutes of criminal infamy into show biz careers, was made into a $45 million major motion picture. Who was the director tasked with reviving the viability of live-action musicals? None other than Rob Marshall, the Tony Award-nominated choreographer-director of that 1992 Juliet Prowse/Bebe Neuwirth Long Beach production that knocked my socks off.  

It's impossible to overstate how excited I was that Friday morning in December of 2002 when my partner and I, returning home from a Christmas trip, stopped off at our place just long enough to drop off our luggage so we could hightail it to Century City and be among the first audience to see CHICAGO on its December 27th opening day in LA. When the film was over and we were handed our evaluation cards by anxious-looking marketing people (the film wouldn't open wide until January), I thought I had died and gone to stage-to-screen heaven. We were both so euphoric over what we'd just seen, after exiting the theater, we swiftly got right back in line to see it again.

Chita Rivera as Nickie
Broadway's original Velma Kelly makes a cameo appearance as a Cook County Jail inmate.
Her name is a nod to the character she played in Fosse's 1969 film Sweet Charity.

Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon avoided several pitfalls from the outset by not trying to reimagine the show for the screen. Instead, they came up with a device (the musical numbers erupt out of Roxie's fevered fantasies) that made the highly-stylized, stage-bound show more cinematic. Boasting spectacular cinematography, a sensational cast, and dazzling choreography, they succeeded in bringing the CHICAGO I loved to the screen. (It had been my gravest fear that the "Victoria's Secret meets International Male" Broadway revival version of  CHICAGO would be the only surviving template for future generations.) 

The film became a major boxoffice and critical hit, garnering a whopping 13 Oscar nominations that year, winning 6, among them Best Picture. CHICAGO revitalized the movie musical.

Taye Diggs as The Bandleader

Christine Baranski as Mary Sunshine

But writing this now, in 2022, it's clear my once all-encompassing ardor for CHICAGO has cooled a bit over the years. After the dust of anticipation settled and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief that the screen adaptation wasn't a botch job like A Chorus Line: The Movie, only then did I notice that somewhere along its 27-year path to the screen, CHICAGO had become neutered. 

When I look at CHICAGO today, the film's black comedy subtext targeting the institutional corruption of the media, penal system, politics, and law, doesn't hit nearly as hard as how sympathetically Roxie and Velma are portrayed. 

Gwen Verdon & Chita Rivera gave us a Roxie and Velma who were genuinely "...older than I ever intended to be." The undeserving pair's hunger for vaudeville fame was a last-gasp act of desperation and resentment after a lifetime of failure and rejection. The Roxie and Velma of the film are both so young and beautiful (and talented) that we're left with the impression that life, indeed, has been unduly dismissive of them. Each suffers so many humiliations, setbacks, and exploitations that by the finale, we're rooting for them and have forgotten (or stopped caring) that they are remorseless murderers. This is obviously the whole point, and the film stays true to that notion... academically. But rather than leaving the audience with a bad taste in its mouth for its complicity in the amorality, I know I was just happy to see these two exploited sad sacks seeing their dreams come true. It was a feel-good ending passing itself off as hard-knock cynicism. 

Fosse/Verdon (2019)

Bianca Marroquin and Michelle Williams

CHICAGO rehearsals 1975

Bob Fosse: "And I'm saying that it would be better for the show if the…."

Gwen Verdon: "Better for the show? Oh, really? Better for the show… Is that really what you think? I'll tell you what would have been better for the show: opening four months ago with a director who wasn't hellbent on turning it into two hours of misery for the audience."

The above exchange may be fictional (from the splendid miniseries Fosse/Verdon), but it reflects a genuine issue that plagued the original production of CHICAGO from the start: concern that Fosse had simply made the show too bitter and misanthropic for its own good. 

Hollywood had no such concerns. When the time came for the film adaptation, far too much Hollywood money was riding on CHICAGO for the studio to even consider taking a chance on having another Pennies from Heaven on its hands (1981's mega-depressing megaflop about another amoral character who uses musical fantasy to escape reality). Miramax insured its $45 million investment by making sure that with this CHICAGO, a good time was going to be had by all. Even if it was a musical about murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery, and treachery--all those things we all hold near and dear to our hearts.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

No one can say Rob Marshall didn't understand the assignment. He was hired to deliver a hit movie musical, and he did. Brilliantly. It really wasn't his fault that the CHICAGO he (and I) fell in love with back in 1975—labeled by many critics at the time as mean-spirited and ugly—had long given way to the forget your troubles, c'mon get happy crowd-pleaser CHICAGO of today. The revamped 1996 Broadway revival of CHICAGO turned Fosse's 1975's ambivalent success into the 2nd longest-running musical in Broadway history. And it didn't accomplish that by making visiting tourists and blue-haired theater parties uncomfortable. It became a hit by submerging the show's unsavory attributes under layers of glamour, sex, and style. Yes, with nary a trace of irony or self-awareness, CHICAGO had become Fosse's "Razzle Dazzle" number.

CHICAGO's themes remain relevant, but its contemptuous 

view of America and humanity no longer discomfit

PERFORMANCES

Casting a movie in ways that invite comparisons to a show's original cast can be problematic. Since there IS no other Roxie Hart for me but Gwen Verdon, I was actually pleased that the film went with an entirely different take on the character. I hadn't seen Renée Zellweger in anything before, but her Roxie has a Glenda Farrell quality—tough, quirky, wisecracking—that feels both period-perfect and suits the film's concept. Catherine Zeta-Jones is dynamic as Velma Kelly, but the lovely woman hasn't a coarse bone in her body. The "foul-mouth broad" part of her performance never convinced me. It's impossible to take your eyes off of her when she's onscreen, but when she tries for Velma's lowbrow vulgarity, the best you get (and here she isn't alone) is Damon Runyon-esque posturing of the Guys and Dolls sort. The entire cast of CHICAGO is exceptionally good, Richard Gere--the most animated I've seen him onscreen since Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)--being a particular delight, displaying even more playful showmanship at age 52 than in that online clip of his 1973 appearance in Grease.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The thrill and terror of seeing any movie adaptation of a favorite show is discovering what they did with (or to) the songs you loved best. Sometimes your favorites don't even make it into the finished film (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever's baffling decision to excise its sole lively production number "Wait Till We're Sixty-Five"). Other times you'll wish they hadn't (don't get me started on A Chorus Line: The Movie again). From the very first time I listened to the CHICAGO Broadway cast album, "Funny Honey," "The Cell Block Tango," "Roxie," and "Nowadays" became my favorite songs in the show. How did their transfer to film rate? 

"Funny Honey"-    B

The movie goes for a sultry, torchy interpretation of this number and scores high points for how it cleverly establishes the film's visual vocabulary for Roxie's fantasies. It only earns a "B" grade because as good as Zellweger is, she simply can't touch Gwen Verdon for comedy delivery. An observation that's less a jab at Ms. Z than a tip of the hat to Verdon.  

"The Cell Block Tango"-  A+

Every detail about this inspired fever dream of a number works magnificently for me. I especially love that Marshall includes the "victims" in this death tango, and the way the prison reality is intercut with the fantasy. The number is theatrical, it's cinematic, it's a scarlet wall of women behind bars. My favorite number in the movie.

"Roxie"-  A+

Roxie is a singular sensation to herself in this narcissist's anthem that becomes a terrifically glossy and stylish production number in the style of the classic Hollywood musicals. It's deliciously old-fashioned, and Zellewgger shines in it. Literally. 

"Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag"- A+

Gangbusters! Because "Hot Honey Rag" wasn't on the OBC album, I only became aware of it when Verdon & Rivera performed it on variety shows, and then I think it was just called "Keep It Hot." Anyhow, it's now a standard part of revival recordings and a "new" favorite for me. "Nowadays" is given its due as both a solo & duet, and the electric staging of "Hot Honey Rag" had me thinking of the flappers in Thoroughly Modern Millie. And seriously, the lyrics to "Nowadays" are out of this world.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In spite of that dreadful, written-for-the-film, Oscar-bait song "I Move On," I'll always enjoy the movie version of CHICAGO. It's an incredibly well-crafted musical that I credit for rescuing the genre from animated singing teapots, and I genuinely think it deserves all of its success. (Though Marshall revealing in the DVD commentary that personal fave-rave Toni Collette was almost cast as Roxie was a bit of "what if?" news I didn't need. OMG...can you imagine?! Be still my heart.)

But through no fault of its own--after all, the movie didn't change, I did--CHICAGO just doesn't stand the test of time for me as what I might consider a classic musical. When I revisit Cabaret (1972), even after all these years, it's a film that continues to offer me a full-course meal. Rewatching  CHICAGO recently was like having a sorbet dessert...thoroughly delightful and pleasant, but there wasn't anything for me to chew on. 

I told you that CHICAGO and A Chorus Line are eternally linked for me. Here it is 2022; both shows have been made into films, yet when I really want to have my best experience of either and both...I still go back to listen to those original Broadway cast records I purchased in August of 1975.

BONUS MATERIAL

There's a wealth of material about CHICAGO on YouTube and throughout the internet. You can see clips from the original production, the 1992 Long Beach production, the 1996 Broadway revival, and the deleted "Class" musical number from the motion picture. Any footage you can catch of Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivers performing is guaranteed to be pure magic. 

Also available on YouTube (for the time being) is the silent film version of Chicago (1927)
 and the Ginger Rogers remake/reworking of Roxie Hart (1942) - Thanks, Cinefilia

My favorite curio is an audio track from the 1975 Philadephia tryouts that features cut songs and the original lyrics to "The Cell Block Tango" (wherein we discover "Lipschitz" initially referred to Jacques Lipschitz, the cubist sculptor). Listen to it HERE.  

"Minsky's Chorus" by Reginal Marsh - 1935
The painting that inspired the original CHICAGO poster art

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2022

SETTLE FOR THE DREAM: SONDHEIM IN THE MOVIES

Legendary composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim appears in remarkably good spirits considering what Elizabeth Taylor is likely doing to one of his songs in this Graham Morris photograph capturing an August 1976 London recording session for the Harold Prince movie adaptation of Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Stephen Sondheim

March 22, 1930 - November 26, 2021

Countless obituaries, tributes, eulogies, and “In Memoriam” articles reiterated the indisputable fact that the death of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim signaled the end of an era in American Musical Theater. And indeed, the breadth of his impact is difficult to overstate. Stephen Sondheim almost single-handedly changed the look, sound, and content of the American musical. Transforming the popular medium that once strove for nothing deeper than “pleasing the tired businessman” (i.e., to amuse and entertain, not instruct or strain the brain) into a sophisticated and challenging art form illuminating complex societal themes and exploring the darker corners of the human condition. It’s impossible to imagine the likes of his particular genius will ever be seen again. 

But to me…a gay man who discovered the brilliant composer-lyricist during my floundering adolescence in the Sexual Revolution/Gay Liberation ‘70s, it’s hard not to look upon the obvious tragedy of Stephen Sondheim’s death at age 91 as simultaneously representing a kind of triumph. A triumph of survival, a triumph of the indomitability of the creative voice, and certainly a triumph of a queer artist's personal journey (from being closeted, coming out in his 40s, to [shades of "Marry Me a Little"] getting wed at the age of 87) in a nearly 70-year career. 

For what’s not triumphant in being a gay man surviving the devastation of the AIDS plague of the ‘80s and living to the astoundingly ripe old age of 91? It’s certainly a triumph that the trajectory of Sondheim’s long career dramatizes the struggle of the American LGBTQ experience: Sondheim’s first Broadway show (1957s West Side Story) was the creation of no less than FOUR societally-mandated closeted gay and bisexual men. By the time of his death, Sondheim was an out-and-proud, world-renowned public figure legally wed to his husband of four years.

Sondheim with the cast of the movie version of Into the Woods

As one of Broadway’s most lauded composer-lyricists (8 Tony Award wins - including an Honorary Lifetime Achievement in Theater Award, 8 Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more) Hollywood beckoned Sondheim from the start. And of his 18 theatrical productions, six have made it to the screen to date. The work he created specifically for the movies includes composing a score for French director Alain Resnais, writing original songs for several feature films (one even garnering him an Oscar win), and collaborating on the screenplay of a murder mystery with his friend and rumored lover Anthony Perkins. 

A 1970s Polaroid featuring Anthony Perkins, Pat Ast, and Marisa Berenson surrounding Sondheim at the piano. Sondheim met Tony Perkins in 1966 when he wrote the words & music for Evening Primrose, an original made-for-TV musical starring Perkins and Charmian Carr (of The Sound of Music).

The relative or comparative success/failure of Hollywood’s adaptations of Sondheim’s work has sparked much unnecessary debate over the years. In the end, it's Sondheim himself who comes across as the level-headed mediator, what with his understanding of the differences between the mediums of film and theater, and therefore being considerably less bent out of shape than his acolytes by the often necessary compromises required in bringing his theatrical works to the screen. 

I think evidence of Sondheim's easygoing philosophy can be found in his music. 

One of the more consistent themes running through Sondheim's work is that, while idealism is both an elemental and essential part of being an artist, a lover, a character in a fairy tale, a dreamer, a suburban married couple, or even a sociopathic killer; the achievement of perfection itself is something unattainable. There can never be such a thing as perfection or "happily ever after" where human beings...in all their flawed complexity...are involved.

 

So many of his musicals end with characters thinking they are “settling” for the less-than-perfect when the overarching theme stresses that once one abandons illusion and fantasy (which makes us question whether we're happy "enough" or if our happiness is the "right kind"), it opens us up to recognizing the often very real happiness that already exists in our lives. Usually, to be found in the only place it can ever truly be: in the here and now, wherever that is, and whatever that may look like. Accepting who we are, what we have, and finding that there is both happiness and contentment within the imperfect, is, I think, the key to happiness and what it means to grow up.   

“Feed the plot to the fish. Life is not what the movies make it seem. Still, we got Dorothy Gish. We can lean back and settle for the dream.”   

- "In The Movies" - from Sondheim's first musical Saturday Night - 1955 (unproduced until 1997)

“In the Movies” is a comic musical number calling attention to the discrepancy between life as we know it and life as depicted on the big screen. In the end, the song makes the case that wishing for reality to be more like the movies is an exercise in futility when it’s precisely life’s deficiencies that make movies so pleasurable (and necessary!). Better to relax, sit back, and enjoy these idealized fantasies for what they are. Why dwell on the unhappy thought that life is so seldom as magical as the movies when the greatest gift that movies offer us is the magic of fantasy? Why not just sit back and “settle for the dream”?

That repeated lyric, with its echoing of the Sondheimian ethos of accepting things as they are…accepting the things you cannot change, feels just right for the title of my brief look at the uneven cinema legacy of the man who became the face of American Musical Theater.   

In 1971 I fell in love with the OBC album of Sondheim's Company (1970).
In 1993 got to see the original cast perform it in concert. 

I suspect theater fans will always prefer their Sondheim onstage and lament that his film adaptations inevitably fall short. And I can see their point. Live theater presents the uncompromised vision and is different each time you see it. But live theater is not as available to some as it is to others. Certainly not as available as film. 

I'm a movie guy and a Sondheim fan to boot, so my attitude is that while I would love it if every screen adaptation of a Sondheim show was "perfection," there is no such thing. And certainly, when it comes to film, what's done is done. There's no matinee the following day where problems can be fixed.  

In any discussion on the topic of whether the movies have ever done justice to the work of Stephen Sondheim, my answer would be a qualified no. But instead of blocking my blessings by playing "It Would Have Been Wonderful," how much better it is for me to sit back and simply appreciate the rare gift it is to have any of Stephen Sondheim's genius preserved on the screen at all. It's a dream I'm more than happy to settle for.  

WEST SIDE STORY - 1961

Directed by Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins, and adapted from the Tony Award-winning musical that marked Sondheim’s Broadway debut. As I fairly exhausted the topic of West Side Story in my previous essay (hint: I'm crazy about this movie) the only thing to add here is that the triumph of this now-classic, Academy Award-winning screen adaptation (a whopping 10 wins including Best Picture and Best Director) still finds Sondheim critical of his own efforts, not the film. Serving as lyricist for Leonard Bernstein’s compositions, Sondheim has said he is embarrassed by the “poetry” of the language he put into the mouths of street kids. He has also stated that many of the changes screenwriter Ernest Lehman brought to the film (specifically as to where certain songs were re-situated) are improvements on the stage version. 

GYPSY - 1962

Directed by Mervyn Leroy and adapted from the 1959 Ethel Merman Broadway musical. Hitting two for two, Sondheim’s second Broadway hit (this time supplying the lyrics to Jules Stein’s music) became his second movie adaptation and second collaboration with Natalie Wood. Controversially cast in place of the bombastic Merman, the vocally-manipulated Rosalind Russell. A delightful, relatively faithful adaptation, Gypsy is another film I’ve exhaustively covered in an earlier post (hint: I’m crazy about it), my only gripe being that it cuts one of my favorite songs “Together Wherever We Go.” 

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM - 1966

Directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night) and adapted from the hit 1962 Broadway musical that won 5 Tony Awards including Best Musical. I confess I’ve never been particularly fond of this "Roman farce meets vaudeville schtick" musical comedy. The frenetic mugging and hamminess of Zero Mostel always crack me up, as do the old-fashioned jokes. But the plot and Lester’s shambolic direction and handling of the musical sequences (almost dutifully, as if he’s trying to get them over with as quickly as possible) make this an adaptation I welcome, but don’t necessarily appreciate. “Forum” marked Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway show as both composer and lyricist. 

THE LAST OF SHEILA -  1973

Directed by Herbert Ross from an original screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and actor Anthony Perkins.  Sondheim combined his passion for puzzles and games with his early experience writing for television in the ‘50s (he wrote several episodes of the comedy program Topper) and came up with a doozy of an all-star whodunit set on the French Riviera. The Agatha Christie-style plot is as complex and twisty as any Sondheim melody, and it’s easy to imagine Perkins contributing a great deal to the gossipy, insider feel of the film's movie-industry setting and its cast of unsympathetic opportunists. The Last of Sheila is another film I’ve written about in a previous post…and by now you know the drill. I’m crazy about it.

STAVISKY - 1974

Directed by Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad). Sondheim was approached by Resnais (who professed to be a fan of the composer) to write the period score for this stylish crime noir set in the early ‘30s and based on the life of real-life political swindler, Serge Alexandre Stavisky. Resnais’ film is an Art Deco visual feast to which Sondheim contributes a breathtakingly lush, sweepingly romantic score. Even if you never have the opportunity to see the sumptuous motion picture, you owe it to yourself to get your hand on the soundtrack. The music is beyond exquisite. 

THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION - 1976

Directed by Herbert Ross and based on the 1974 Nicholas Meyer novel that posits Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud joining forces to solve a crime. Sondheim contributes a song sung by a high-class madam (French nightclub legend Régine Zylberberg) at a whorehouse soirée. The liltingly raunchy tune “I Never Do Anything Twice (The Madam’s Song)” recalls the comic double-entendre vulgarity of "Can That Boy Foxtrot!" (a song excised from his show Follies). For all its risqué wit "The Madam's Song" is featured for mere seconds in the film. Happily, the song can be heard in its entirety on any number of Sondheim CD collections out there. 

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC - 1977

Based on Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, A Little Night Music won Harold Prince a Tony Award for his direction of the 1973 Broadway production (it won 6 awards total, including Best Musical). But his somewhat lumbering direction of the film adaptation won him nothing but critical brickbats. One of Sondheim’s most popular and accessible shows (a happy ending!) features a score of waltz-time melodies so sublime, that the flaws of the movie adaptation never bothered me. I'm in the majority-of-one camp that finds the film version to be absolutely enchanting, the rewritten song "The Glamorous Life" and new lyrics for "Night Waltz" being worth the effort alone.   

REDS  - 1981

Directed by Warren Beatty. Sondheim was originally enlisted to write the entire score for this love story set during the early days of the Russian Revolution. Sondheim declined– score chores then taken over by David Grusin – but did contribute a delicate instrumental theme song “Goodbye for Now.” Instrumental and vocal versions of the song appear in several Sondheim collections. The song's boon and bane is that it does what all movie music should do-- enhance the drama of the story without calling attention to itself. But when it comes to Sondheim, I'm not sure being unaware of him is what I'm after. 

DICK TRACY - 1990

Directed by Warren Beatty. In Sondheim’s second collaboration with Beatty, the director/star again wanted the composer to write the entire score, and again Sondheim declined. Danny Elfman went on to handle that chore in this primary-color action-comedy that brings Chester Gould’s comic strip detective to life. Sondheim contributed five 1930s-inspired songs: “Back in Business”, “What Can You Lose”, “More”, “Live Alone and Like It”, and the torchy “Sooner or Later” which won Sondheim his first and only Oscar.

THE BIRDCAGE - 1996

Directed by Mike Nichols and adapted from the 1973 French play La Cage of Folles which had already been turned into a film in 1978 and a Broadway musical (by outspoken Sondheim critic Jerry Herman) in 1983. My dislike for this fiercely unfunny film knows no bounds, so I’m going to be as terse as possible here. It would take the likes of Hercule Poirot to find the three songs Sondheim contributed to this movie. An original song, “It Takes All Kinds” went unused. Then there's a song titled “Little Dream" that plays for about six seconds. The delectable duet “Love is in the Air” (a song originally written for “Forum”) gets about 45 seconds of screen time. The nip/tuck treatment of Sondheim's music is especially irksome because so much of The Birdcage takes place in a nightclub.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET - 2007

Directed by Tim Burton and adapted from the 1979 Broadway production that won 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score. This blood-soaked Grand Guignol opera is my #1 favorite of all Sondheim’s works, and I’ve listened to it countless times. That I consider it to be his masterpiece might suggest I would find fault with the faithful but severely truncated Tim Burton adaptation. But–weakish lead vocals and humorlessness aside–I think this is a rather splendid adaptation. Granted, I might be cutting this film some slack because a full version of the national touring company with Angela Lansbury & George Hearn had already been committed to video in 1982, so it's not like Burton's movie needs to be the definitive screen version. Also, Burton's version earns points for not being guilty of the musical adaptation sin of having a superfluous new song awkwardly shoehorned into the original score in hopes of garnering an Oscar nomination.

INTO THE WOODS - 2014

Directed by Rob Marshall and adapted from the three-time 1987 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Remarkably, this film version of Sondheim’s grim adult take on Grimm’s fairy tales marks my first time ever seeing Into The Woods (1984’s Sunday in the Park with George had put me off Sondheim for a bit), so I’m willing to accept the tiresomely patronizing assurances from my theater-geek friends that until I watch the complete production performed by the original Broadway cast for cable TV in 1991, I STILL haven’t seen Into the Woods. Be that as it may, in the spirit of discovery I must say I had the best time watching Marshall's film. Wonderful performances throughout, and that absolutely superb and complex score. Subsequent revisits…with fast-forward remote at the ready… have been less ecstatic. The film was nominated for 3 Oscars.

CAMP - 2003

Todd Graff wrote and directed this musical comedy-drama set in a performing arts camp for teenagers. Sondheim donated three of his songs to this low-budget labor of love: “I’m Still Here” and “Losing My Mind” from Follies, and “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company. (I'm honestly not sure if teens singing these decidedly mature songs was part of the joke ["I'm Still Here"...from what, detention?] I sincerely hope so.) Sondheim also donated his time and gravitas by appearing as himself in a brief cameo. In a sort of Waiting for Guffman moment, the patron saint of musical theater teens arrives at the camp in a limousine with the license plate 4UM, his entrance given an appropriately rockstar welcome.

WEST SIDE STORY - 2021

Difficult for me to call Stephen Spielberg's adaptation of Sondheim's West Side Story a remake because it feels so fresh. It's more like when great Shakespearean works are revisited...each becomes its own unique interpretation. Given my strong affection for the 1961 film, I wasn't truly expecting to fall in love with this version the way that I ultimately did. It kind of swept me off my feet. Hearing new arrangements of long-familiar songs and seeing an old story told through a younger, more aware, cringe-free prism was a thrilling experience that had me in tears throughout. 

TICK, TICK...BOOM! - 2021

I honestly tried, but I found it impossible to make it through even the first 20 minutes of 2021's Tick, Tick...Boom!, so I missed out on experiencing Sondheim's audio-only "cameo" (as himself) in dramatic context (I watched a clip of the scene on YouTube). In a mini-monologue written by Sondheim himself, his voice is heard on an answering machine giving up-and-coming composer Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) a timely pep talk. The film, set in 1999 gives us Stephen  Sondheim in the flesh, portrayed by actor Bradley Whitford of Get Out (2017). My personal feelings about the movie aside, I can't imagine a greater testament to Stephen Sondheim's enduring brilliance than his being depicted in this film as an icon of musical theater, a patron saint and inspiration to young artists. 

GLASS ONION - 2022

"Sorry, Blanc. You're thrown out of the airlock. It's a no-brainer."  - Those are the only lines spoken by Stephen Sondheim in this, his last screen appearance. Playing himself, he appears in a COVID lockdown Zoom gathering with Broadway legend Angela Lansbury (also her final screen appearance), NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and actress Natasha Lyonne. They are all playing the online video sleuthing game "Among Us" with world-famous fictional detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) in this, his second screen mystery (following the character's debut in Knives Out - 2019). Sondheim's appearance as gamer "Steve S." is but a cameo, but in context, it's an ideal screen sendoff for one of popular culture's most well-known game-players. A screen farewell made all the more satisfying because Benoit Blanc's fondness for Sondheim music was wittily referenced in Knives Out, and because Rian Johnson's murder mystery Glass Onion consistently pays loving homage to Sondheim & Perkin's twisty & bitchy 1973 whodunit The Last of Sheila.

*****

Stephen Sondheim's legacy for me is indelible and rich. For some reason, he seems to have been the perfect composer to introduce me to musical theater at an impressionable age. He set a very high standard. That his reputation continues to grow and his work is recognized and lauded by an entirely new generation makes me glad that at least a few of his shows have been preserved on film. 

My Favorite Stephen Sondheim Musical Scores

My Top Five Favorite Sondheim Songs:

"Every Day a Little Death"

"Not While I'm Around" 

"Losing My Mind"

"There's Always a Woman"

"Side by Side by Side/What Would We Do Without You?"

Readers: No one should have to pick a "favorite" from Sondheim's sizeable catalog of impossibly beautiful (and riotously funny) songs, but if you care to share a particular Sondheim composition you enjoy or that means something to you, I'd be interested to know.  

BONUS MATERIAL:

Liza Minnelli sings Sondheim's "Losing My Mind" - from her Results album -1989

I know a music video doesn’t officially fit the “Sondheim in the Movies” theme of this tribute, but this is included here because Oscar-winning, Miss Show-Biz herself, Liza Minnelli, delivers more deliriously extravagant drama, anguish, camp, and genuine pathos in 4 ½ minutes than you’ll find in a Douglas Sirk/David Lynch film festival. 

For those desperate to make a movie connection; imagine this video as a 20-years-later short film sequel to Minnelli's The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) with an adult Pookie Adams still getting herself into obsessive, one-way relationships.

Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe) produced this infectious synthpop dance version of Sondheim’s torch ballad from Follies. On the strength of Minnelli’s committed, full-throttle performance, I also find this majestically melodramatic music video…which even features a nod to the Emcee in Cabaret…to be delicately moving. Directed by Briant Grant.

In the comic whodunit Knives Out (2019) Daniel Craig
plays a gay master detective with a fondness for Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim made his acting debut in the Oscar Levant-esque role of songwriter Maxie Schwartz in the 1974 TV adaptation of George F. Kaufman's 1929 comedy June Moon. The entire telecast is available for viewing on YouTube or as part of the Great Performances DVD collection.

Crazy business this, this life we live in
Can't complain about the time we're given
With so little to be sure of in this world,
We had a moment
A marvelous moment

-"With So Little To Be Sure Of" - from Anyone Can Whistle - 1964 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2022