Gone with the Wind - the musical

[dirac]

Hoo, boy:

I’m told that a group of producers have secured the rights from the Mitchell estate and are proceeding toward a 2008 production. The big desired star to play Rhett Butler: Hugh Jackman.

[Petra]

At least no one's saying that Hugh Jackamn resembles Clark Gable...

[papeetepatrick]

Fox News is hardly to be believed, well they're not supposed to have decent fact-checkers, I suppose--it maybe wouldn't even go with the territory: 'Gone With the Wind' has been a musical since the early 70's and has a charming score by Harold Rome. It was a Japanese production first and there was always talk of opening it in New York. In London, Harve Presnell was Rhett, and the venerable Bessie Love was Aunt Pitty-Pat.

I am not even guessing anything here, as I have the LP of the London Cast Recording. So maybe they're using somebody else's book and music, but I'm not looking forward to it and frankly even hope one of the big department-store musical people will write it. I can hardly think of a less appealing idea at this point.

[richard53dog]

Fox News is hardly to be believed, well they're not supposed to have decent fact-checkers, I suppose--it maybe wouldn't even go with the territory: 'Gone With the Wind' has been a musical since the early 70's and has a charming score by Harold Rome. It was a Japanese production first and there was always talk of opening it in New York. In London, Harve Presnell was Rhett, and the venerable Bessie Love was Aunt Pitty-Pat.

I am not even guessing anything here, as I have the LP of the London Cast Recording. So maybe they're using somebody else's book and music, but I'm not looking forward to it and frankly even hope one of the big department-store musical people will write it. I can hardly think of a less appealing idea at this point.

Right. I remember seeing photos of ads from both Japan, and later, London.

Maybe 1974 or so?

[dirac]

I seem to remember 1972, but little else.

Atlanta Ballet once contemplated a dance version, but nixed it for reasons I hope are obvious.

Tell us more about the score, papeetepatrick, please.

[papeetepatrick]

Dirac--will do. In more detail tomorrow or Sunday, and will simply add to this entry here. In the meantime, there are very many pretty songs and almost all extremely well-sung. The loveliest is probably 'How Often, How Often' sung by Harve Presnell and June Ritchie, who plays Scarlett. There are montages of Appalachian/Scottish type songs juxtaposed next to Scarlett singing of Tomorrow is Another Day and the household staff singing a Tra la la song for Christmas. Weakest in the Rome score are attempts at the big signatures of the film--a song called 'Tara' is not bad, but is not nearly as effective as when Scarlett's father goes into a mere few words of verbal rapture about 'the land!' in the film and Scarlett can almost be seen to absorb it, with the image dissolving in ways not seen much since--much more rapturous there, to be sure. You hear her singing of 'never going hungry again', etc., not terrible though. The one actually very bad thing is the Overture, because there is the attempt to do something to catch the spirit of 'Tara's Theme' without, of course, overtly imitating, and the result if dreadfully flat. In fact, it cannot be said that even with Rome's lovely music there is ever anything that is as stirring as those chimes that open the credits for the theme of the movie. But there is a song for nearly every character, including Frank Kennedy, Scarlett's father as mentioned, Melanie and Ashley (this is very nice), and even Belle Watling and Rhett.

I'll go through it song by song tomorrow or Sunday.

[papeetepatrick]

I'll just continue in a second post so the extra part doesn't disappear. There are several songs for Rhett and Scarlett besides 'How Often, How Often', including 'Two of a Kind', 'Marrying for Fun', and the concluding

'It Doesn't Matter Now.' Like much of Rome, these are pleasing and few, if any, ever become hits. The film version of 'Fanny' only used themes from the Broadway musical in form of background music. 'Blueberry Eyes', sung by Isabelle Lucas and Marion Ramsey as Mammy and Prissy, is another folksong thing, and is quite pretty. 'A Time for Love' is for Belle Watling and Rhett, and is fairly insignificant. 'Bonnie Gone' is beautiful if somewhat stereotyped song for a big black Mahalia Jackson-sort of voice, and Isabelle Lucas makes it effective. The recording was made June 18, 1972, at EMI's Abbey Road studios in London. It's chief interest is the few really beautiful Harold Rome songs--this means the ones sung by Presnell and Lucas, although the other singers are unusually good, more than adequate. I like Presnell perhaps even better than Raitt and MacRae, perhaps he was the last genuine artist in that tradition of big Broadway hero, and all of his songs sound like pure gold.

One thing I noticed, not having listened to the album in a few years, is that this is not really something possible, and yet this was a good attempt as far as you can tell from the score. Rome's scores are excellent even if they don't quite reach hit status with individual songs. This particular score is reminiscent of some Broadway scores that were being written at that time in the early 70's, like Claibe Richardson's 'The Grass Harp', an enormous flop that nevertheless has been preserved in its often lovely score on record as well--it's hard to believe it starred Barbara Cook, Karen Morrow, and Carol Brice and lasted maybe 20 performances. Mainly, I think the things the made the film of 'Gone with the Wind' possible due to perhaps bad social conditions during its time were already a bit sterilized in this early 70s production; but to do it now just seems so silly, even though such silliness could be said to match the times. I wouldn't go unless paid to any new version of 'Gone With the Wind', it will inevitably be a cartoon.

Edited to add: Amazon.com has the 1970 Japanese recording and there is also a book by Florence Rome called 'the Scarlett Letters' that the NYPL has. I looked at it a few years ago, skimmed it, it's like Diana Vreeland or something, lots of Park Avenue types who could still be famous then in a more old-styled way, but I didn't find it of much interest. All these types, even when they still exist, are not publicized in the same way that big media figures are, but I was still surprised Mrs. Rome's book seemed so frivolous.

[dirac]

Mainly, I think the things the made the film of 'Gone with the Wind' possible due to perhaps bad social conditions during its time were already a bit sterilized in this early 70s production; but to do it now just seems so silly, even though such silliness could be said to match the times. I wouldn't go unless paid to any new version of 'Gone With the Wind', it will inevitably be a cartoon.

The cleaning up process really started with the old movie – David O. Selznick was a civilized man, he obviously wasn’t going to make a picture exactly as Margaret Mitchell wrote it, what with her “capering” and “childlike” slaves, full throated endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan, emphasis on the topic of horny black men with designs on white women, etc., etc. (I love the book and always will, but I still wince to think that when I was a kid I was not bothered by those things as I should have been.) All that stuff didn’t disappear exactly, but it was elided, downplayed, or eliminated entirely, without violating the spirit of the book or its true strengths, even though to a modern eye the racism of the film still looks awful. Today, however, you couldn’t do that, the times have changed too much, and ‘cartoon’ is a very likely description of what will be put on stage if they proceed with this. Alternatively, they could try a ‘bringing out the subtext’ approach, putting the slaves front and center, which is pretty much guaranteed not to work.

[dirac]

Well, they’re going ahead with it:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle3720744.ece

More personally, the theme of the emancipation of the slaves fired Nunn’s liberal instincts. But with her Southern racism, Scarlett is a flawed heroine for modern times. “You want your novelist to be ahead of their time,” agrees Nunn, who also struggled with Victor Hugo’s view of the poor Thénardiers. “But you also must understand the extent to which they are of it. Mitchell gives the black characters a potent sense of morality; on a number of occasions, Mammy, Uncle Peter and Big Sam are the book’s moral arbiters.”