| re: let's hear it for bells are ringing! | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:14 pm EDT 07/24/24 | |
| In reply to: let's hear it for bells are ringing! - sc2 03:23 pm EDT 07/20/24 | |
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| sc2, you wrote, "1 a new opening number had to be added so the audience knew they were saying a musical comedy and not a labor play." That seems odd to me. What in Bells Are Ringing would lead anyone to wonder if they were seeing a labor play? Sure, it deals with a workplace, but no labor-management issues come up except that Sue gets frustrated with her cousin's meddling in the lives of the customers. In addition, as far as I can tell (although I'm not 100-percent sure of this), I believe the opening sequence that we know, or at least something close to it, was in the show when it opened in New Haven, the first tryout city where it played. Is it possible you're thinking of The Pajama Game? That is certainly a show about labor-management relations, something they tried to downplay when holding backers auditions. And the opening sequence we know seems not to have been in the show when it played its first performance in New Haven, also the first tryout city for the show (as it was for hundreds if not thousands of shows). The title song is not listed in the New Haven program. The first number at that time, at least as listed in the program, was "A New Town Is a Blue Town," and the second number was "Racing With the Clock." So it seems that the opening that we know, admitting that the show was about labor-management relations but making clear that a light approach was to be taken, seems to have been added after the first performance in New Haven. "2 the then married couple Larry parks and Betty Garrett play the leading roles eventually." This makes it sound like it was a good deal of time later that Garrett and Parks played the role. In fact, it was for two weeks just nine months after the opening, when Judy Holliday and Sydney took simultaneous vacations. "4 comden and green had known Judy Holliday years before they wrote the musical for her." They had not only known her for years, they had performed with her and written for her when they were all in a cabaret performing group called The Revuers, before any of them was famous. |
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