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outoftowninac · 3 years

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THE AMAZING ADELE

1955

“The Amazing Adele” was a musical by Anita Loos (book) and Albert Selden (music and lyrics), based on a 1950 French comedy by Pierre Barrillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy "Le Don d'Adele."

Loos was the author of the highly successful “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” This musical was nicknamed “Gentlemen Chase Redheads”.

Although the musical never tried out in Atlantic City, it is predominantly set in the seaside resort town. According to Loos: “It is the story of a Boardwalk Cinderella - with sex.” The location of the original French play was a suburb of Paris. While writing the script, Loos initially set the action in Brooklyn, before finally moving it to Atlantic City during the summer of 1935, twenty years before the show premiered.

The musical starred TAMMY GRIMES in the title role (in what would have been her Broadway debut), JOHNNY DESMOND, DAGMAR, ENID MARKEY and JOEY FAYE and featured PEGGY CASS, CRIS ALEXANDER, DON DE LEO, BABE HINES, HELEN DOWDY, ALLEN CONROY, MARA LYNN and STEVE WILAND.

Sets designed by OLIVER SMITH; Costumes designed by THOMAS BECHER; Dances and Musical Numbers staged by HERBERT ROSS; Musical Direction by SAUL SCHECHTMAN; Directed by JACK LANDAU; Produced by ALBERT SELDEN and MORTON GOTTLIEB.

Musical Numbers

Atlantic City Welcomes You

What Kind of Grandma Are You?

My Luck Has Changed

Saturday Night

The A.P.I.S. Parade

Now Is the Time

The Amazing Adele

Treat 'Em Rough

You Belong

Go and Get Yourself a Yo-Yo

Yo-Yo Dance

Tango, The

Under the Boardwalk Ballet

Count on Me

I Wonder

Go Away Devil

Never Again

Who Needs It

Finale

A production number was nicknamed "The Chase Supreme" by the cast It featured chorus girls and actors chasing one another up and down the aisles of the orchestra seats and balcony, leaping from the boxes onto the stage.

Originally, the producers wanted Leslie Caron for the lead and Roland Petit to choreograph. In July 1955, Tammy Grimes was announced as standby for the title role and Kay Thompson was likely to take the role of Lila. By August, Grimes had been cast in the lead role with no explanation for Caron's not being cast.

Gloria McGhee and Patty Andrews (of the singing sisters) were mentioned as cast members in August 1955. Joe E. Brown was announced to join the cast in November 1955. None of their names, however, are on the final cast list.

Auditions for singers and dancers for the ensemble were held in New York City in early September.

Those winning roles were: Alvin Beam, Grover Dale, William Guske, William Inglis, Kenneth LeRoy, Gene Meyers, Harry Lee Rogers, Beverly Barsanti, Gene Carrons, Marlyn Greer, Jeanne Jones, Janet Perry, Bobbi Styne, Charles Aschmann, Jerry Craig, Edward Grace, Joe Ross, Charles Rule, James Stevenson, Betty Abbott, Janet Conway, Doreen Davis. June Ericson, Peg Hadley, Michelle Reiner, Jeri Archer, Carlene Carroll, Ruth Gillis, Lee Perkins, and Connie Van Ess.

Of this ensemble, Grover Dale is probably the best known. This would have been his Broadway debut, but this happened the very next year as a dancer in “Li’ Abner”. He went on to become an understudy and replacement in the original “West Side Story” (1957 above) before becoming a choreographer and director in his own right.

One big name performer turned down a casting offer for the new musical...

...and another signed on, despite having to put her popular TV show on hold.

Rehearsals for “The Amazing Adele” began on November 19, 1955.

It didn’t help that November was cold and flu season.

Then this! Dagmar took “Break a Leg” to extremes!

(C)ouch! Even the furniture isn’t stable!

But at least she won’t be upstaged by other blondes!

A tryout in Philadelphia (prior to Broadway) was as close as the show would get to it’s main setting of Atlantic City.

The show went from Philly to Bean Town - still hoping the Great White Way was in its future.

While the show was still in rehearsals, gossip gal Hedda Hopper reported that breakout star Shirley MacLaine was whispered for the movie version of “The Amazing Adele.”

Originally, the production had hoped to open on Broadway in December 1955. But by October of that year, a booking jam in theatres led many productions to either cancel or take extended pre-Broadway tryouts.

The production was to open January 26, 1956 at the Winter Garden Theatre. However, contracts had not been signed and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's production of Tamburlaine the Great went into the Winter Garden instead. On January 10, co-producer Albert Selden announced that the opening had been shifted to January 27 and that the Broadway Theatre was the likely venue.

Ultimately, poor reviews and lack of a theatre caused the production to shut down without opening on Broadway.

~ excerpt from “The Complete Book of 1950s Broadway Musicals” by Dan Dietz

In November 1955, New York newspapers ran an item saying that Peter B. Zeisler, who was the stage manager, was having a difficult time trying to find a yo-yo instructor. One of the production numbers required show girls to move to the footlights and create intricate patterns with the toys. Ziesler said, "Anyone can learn to use a yo-yo but it takes special instructions for the special tricks required." Zeisler eventually found Harold Frankel, a 17-year-old Brooklyn youth, to teach the show girls the patterns they needed. Frankel told the New York Times that the routines were: the creeper, trip to the moon, walk the dog, the sleep, around the world, shoot the gun, rock the cradle and Texas star.

The Philadelphia Review...

The first impression that one carries away from “The Amazing Adele" is it is probably the loudest musical comedy to open here in a long time perhaps the loudest since Anita Loos investigated another earlier bit o’ Americana in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” And it must be admitted that frequently there is excitement in the stomping and shouting which go on at the Shubert in Miss Loos' most recent backward look, this time at Atlantic City in the middle 1930s.

WIT IS SACRIFICED

On the other hand the disagreeable thought persists that wit has been sacrificed for exuberance, that even in the tolerant realm of musical comedy that the plot motivation is a bitt thin for all the fuss and that balladry suffers from undue amplification.

Swinging the pendulum back again, the show has some personalities, both new and familiar, who may be able to bring ultimate order out of the present chaos. It introduces a wide-eyed young lady with a washing-machine hairdo and a faint Scots burr named Tammy Grimes, who has the title role.

CLAIRVOYANT ORPHAN

She portrays an orphanage graduate with an amazing gift of clairvoyance, which fits perfectly into the scheme of that part of Boardwalk given over to palm readers, soothsayers and exhibitors or dead whales the latter role assumed by our hero. There is a catch to the Amazing Adele's gift, however. It has vanishing point strongly rooted biology and the exposition of idea is the fundamental base of plot provided by Miss Loos.

Handicap or not the story gives Grimes a chance for several striking dance scenes and some adventures, which in their robust passages are effective. The cast also offers Dagmar, of television's earlier discoveries, who overcomes a somewhat shaky start to present a sort of Mae Wes-tian kind of hostess of a typical honky-tonk night club in Atlantic City, or anywhere, of 1935, or time. She is particularly effective when she clowns through a parody.

STAGE-SHAKING DANCES

Speaking of dances, Herbert Ross has staged some stage-shaking ones and one of the solo step pers, Mara Lynn, completely stop the first act with a beaming-eyed, ingenuous rendition of a "Yo-yo" dance which will never be confused with a polka. The dependable Joey Faye is amusing as a gentle type of villain. Johnny Desmond plays hero in the "noble-heel" tradition of Sky Masterson of "Guys Dolls." Enid Markey wins as his horse-playing grandmother, and Peggy Cass plays a pre-Adele crystal-gazer who knows all secrets. The songs by Albert Selden lose by the amplification, but the ballads, "Now Is the Time," "You Belong" sounded good.

The old adage “Banned in Boston” was not an exaggeration.

The Boston Review:

by CYRUS DURGIN

"The Amazing Adele" which Albert Selden and Morton Gottlieb brought to the Shubert Theatre last night, is best described as a rowdy musical comedy. Based, and apparently distantly based, on the French comedy of 1950, "Le Don d'Adele," which was described as very funny, this is a show loud and fast, garish and commonplace, crude and tough. It will not appeal to that segment of the public with sensibility.

It may be that someone thought this Anita Loos - Albert Selden contrivance might be to the sporting days and circle of Atlantic City in the 1930's what "The Boy Friend" is to the 1920's. Whether or no, it isn't. But "The Amazing Adele" does have two big assets in Tammy Grimes and Johnny Desmond, gifted performers who, with better material and direction, may yet emerge top-liners.

Miss Grimes has the most unusual, off-beat charming personality in years, which is accentuated by her very mobile face and its thatch of ultra-blonde, gamin-cut hair. As the Adele of the title, a girl who can foretell the future, except in relation to herself, Miss Grimes is a shining jewel in this tawdry exhibition.

Mr. Desmond has a good personality and a robust singing voice, and the easeful magnetism of a born performer. Miss Loos book deals with what happens when the clairvoyant Adele gets mixed up with the casing-and-gambling set amid the honky-tonks of Atlantic City. She is up against the machinations of Horace Moran, the local crook and his trigger-men; of Mme. Zelda, one or the less-accomplished phony crystal-gazers; of The Professor, whose violin case sometimes contains a violin, and, when, it comes to the affections of Tony Gaskey, whom Adele loves, the animosity of Flo La Marr, a female hardly to be described in a family newspaper.

But, thank heaven, Love wins out by 11 p.m. There are numerous gimmicks to keep the volume loud and the pace febrile, such as Mara Lynn, the mostly undressed girl who twirls a yo-yo; numerous hackneyed dance routines; a so-called ballet on midnight swimming, very suggestive, and a terpsichorean interlude by "The Scanties of 1935 Cuties," whose costume necklines have plunged nearly as far as the law of gravity can summon them.

Yet, there is not one truly pretty girl in view. In the cast are people of eminence in various branches of the entertainment business: the blonde Dagmar, Joey Faye and Enid Markey, together with Peggy Cass, Don DeLeo and others.

With no place to perform, and less than stellar reviews and pre-sale, the show played its final performance in Boston. The loss to backers is estimated at between $250,000 to $328,000, most invested the show’s composer, Albert Selden. The show has never been revived.

#Tammy Grimes #Atlantic City #Anita Loos #Amazing Adele #Broadway #musical #musical comedy #Peggy Cass #Don DeLeo #Johnny Desmond #Joey Faye #Mara Lynn #Yo-Yo #Albert Selden

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rollingstonemag · 5 years

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Un nouvel article a été publié sur https://www.rollingstone.fr/live-report-hellfest-2019/

LIVE REPORT - Hellfest Experience

Musiques extrêmes, soleil de plomb, foule compacte, ambiance de folie, programmation de haut vol… Malgré une annulation conséquente, Hellfest 2019 n’a pas failli à son statut de plus grand festival de France et à sa promesse de faire vivre aux spectateurs une expérience totale.

Jour 1 : un seul être vous manque…

Le matin de la première journée (si on ne compte pas la tenue la veille du Knotfest, festival organisé par le groupe Slipknot) fut marqué par une violente secousse, de niveau 10 sur l’échelle du Hellfest : l’annulation du concert très attendu des têtes d’affiches, Manowar, pour des raisons indépendantes de la volonté de l’organisation. Ce à quoi les Kings of Metal américains, qui n’ont pas la réputation d’être des clients faciles, rétorquent que le festival a entravé leurs efforts pour mettre en place le spectacle promis à leurs fans. En coulisses, les rumeurs sont légion, certains parlent d’un problème technique, d’un contentieux financier, d’autres affirment que les torts seraient partagés à 50/50… ce sont surtout les tribunaux qui feront la lumière sur cette affaire, des avocats et des huissiers de justice ayant été rapidement dépêchés sur le site. Pour pallier à cette défection, la formation suédoise de power metal, Sabbaton, remet le couvert, elle qui la veille concluait le Knotfest. C’en fut trop pour la voix, éteinte, du chanteur Joakim Broden, remplacé au pied levé par ses deux guitaristes qui peuvent imaginer sans problème une belle reconversion, si un jour, leurs instruments ne les démangent plus. Avant ce concert de sauvetage qui restera dans les annales, Dream Theater a mis tout le monde d’accord par son habituelle virtuosité, qui a également révélé que leurs nouveaux titres vivaient bien mieux en live que sur sillons, et les petits-enfants américains des Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, ont confirmé leur statut de groupe calibré pour les festivals, armés de leur punk celtique énervé qui convoque cornemuses, accordéons et banjos. La programmation de la mainstage 2 entièrement dédiée à la scène française avait des allures de best-of, comme ont pu en témoigner les nombreux circle pit du public chauffé à blanc sous le soleil clissonnais : No One Is Innocent, Dagoba, Ultra Vomit (qui ont invité un sosie de Calogero pour leur reprise de « Face à la Mer »), Mass Hysteria impérial et furieux, et enfin, Gojira, en patrons du jour et maçons d’un mur de son inébranlable et terriblement efficace. Pendant ce temps-là, sur la scène La Valley, le groupe britannique bien nommé Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, délivrait ses essences psychédéliques dans un climat hypnotique pour ne pas dire mystique. Plus qu’un concert, une célébration collective sous la sainte bénédiction de Black Sabbath et de Pentagram.

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Jour 2 : French Kiss

Il y a des signes qui ne trompent pas, des déguisements et des maquillages surtout : la Kiss Army est dans la place car ce soir la formation américaine est censée jouer son dernier concert de tous les temps en France… même s’il convient de rester prudent en la matière, Kiss n’en étant pas à sa première tournée d’adieux ! Dans l’après-midi, le super groupe Deadland Ritual (Geezer Butler, Steve Stevens et Matt Sorum) a régalé l’assistance de quelques reprises bien senties (« Rebel Yell », « Neon Knights ») tandis que sobres et impliqués, les Eagles of Death Metal ont réussi leur retour sur une scène française, loin des polémiques. Parfois décevant en concert, le Whitesnake de David Coverdale assure le job, sans plus, tout comme Def Leppard finalement, musicalement irréprochable mais dont le show trop mécanique manque d’un peu de folie et d’une scénographie à la hauteur de leur stature. Pas besoin de décorum pour Didier Wampas, officiellement à la retraite mais officieusement en grande forme devant une War Zone qui pogote en rangs serrés et à laquelle il est extrêmement difficile d’accéder. 210 ans à eux trois, ZZ Top célèbre de belle manière son cinquantenaire, sans tambours ni trompettes, mais avec un répertoire qui a fait ses preuves et un final de légende où se sont succédées « La Grange » et « Tush ». Le rideau se lève enfin, les musiciens de Kiss descendent sur scène au moyen de plateformes élévatrices, les premières notes de « Detroit Rock City » fusent, c’est parti pour le grand cirque, tout y est : la langue courbée de Gene Simmons, les lasers, les fumigènes, le feu d’artifice, les solos interminables de batterie et de guitare, les cascades en tyrolienne de Paul Stanley, dont la voix atteint parfois ses limites, au contraire du bassiste Gene Simmons, monté comme un ressort sur ses platform boots. Du grand spectacle à l’américaine bien servi par les trois écrans géants qui encadrent désormais les deux mainstages et qui offrent un mur d’images panoramique impressionnant de 150 mètres de long.

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Jour 3 : Du nord au sud

S’il est un groupe où la place de chanteur tient du poste à hauts risques, c’est bien Stone Temple Pilots, qui a viré successivement Scott Weiland et Chester Bennington, tous deux décédés depuis. Ex-candidat de X-Factor en place depuis 2017, Jeff Gutt, visiblement ému de fouler la mainstage, s’en sort avec les honneurs par-dessus les distortions rageuses de Dean DeLeo. Une sirène retentit, l’heure d’Anthrax a sonné, celle d’un trash metal exécuté dans la plus pure des traditions (tout comme Slayer quelques heures plus tard), qui n’oublie pas d’interpréter sa célèbre cover d’« Antisocial », chantée comme un seul homme par Clisson. Un drapeau sudiste surgit dans la foule, qui annonce Lynyrd Skynyrd, au sein duquel ne se trouve plus qu’un seul membre fondateur, le guitariste Gary Rossington, rescapé du tragique accident d’avion qui décima le groupe en 1977. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’ensemble joue sévère et aligne les standards : « Simple Man », « Sweet Home Alabama », « Free Bird »… Un peu auparavant, le Nord était à l’honneur grâce au groupe français de rock viking SKÁLD, dont la scène Temple a du mal à contenir les fans qui sont, ironie du sort, accablés de chaleur ! Après la purge Lamb of God (le silence qui a suivi leur prestation peut être considéré comme un don du ciel), le salut vint de Slash feat. Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators. Fidèle à lui-même, tout en sueur et énergie, le guitar-hero n’a pas décroché un mot, juste esquissé un sourire, et n’a lâché son manche que deux secondes afin d’inciter le public à taper des mains. Le reste fut une démonstration magistrale de tout ce qu’il est à peu près possible de réaliser avec une 6 cordes quand on se nomme Saul Hudson et qu’on est probablement un extra-terrestre. « Nightrain », l’unique reprise des Guns N’ Roses, a démontré qu’il ne manquait qu’une chose à cette formation : le sens mélodique d’un certain Axl Rose. Enfin, Tool, son metal progressif, ses ambiances planantes et ses vidéos expérimentales, a conclu idéalement cette 14e édition du festival des musiques extrêmes qui a réuni 180 000 personnes durant trois jours. Dont la majorité réitèrera sans nul doute l’expérience l’année prochaine. Il existe en effet des rendez-vous en enfer qui valent bien tous les paradis.

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Denis Roulleau

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