Word: cleopatras
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When Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh decided to do Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra for last summer's Festival of Britain, Stage Designer Roger Furse jokingly suggested that they do Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra as well. They smiled at the idea but were quickly haunted by it; and in due time the two Cleopatras became the sensation of the festival. Long before they opened in Manhattan last week, to rave reviews and a $900,000 advance, they had become a Broadway sensation as well...
This posed a stickler for Shaw's trusted friend, Producer Gabriel (Pygmalion, Caesar and Cleopatra) Pascal, who had to stretch the two-acter, Androcles and the Lion, to feature length. Pascal finally wangled a grudging O.K. from the trustees of Shaw's estate to raise the alteration rate to 25%, and fattened up the script with lines borrowed from Shaw's own preface. With the biggest barrier hurdled, Androcles was only two weeks behind schedule at RKO last week...
From Tallahassee to Timbuktu, they set the fashion in clothes, kisses, hairdos and seduction. For years, they were adored more fervently than Cleopatra or Jenny Lind. For years, they ruled the dreams of the world...
...program then returned to the scheduled events. General MacAnthony told Cleopatra that it had been a long time since she came down to the U of Rome. Cleopatra, reflecting on her college days, later mentioned "I can still see my old house-mummy." Then, at a prearranged signal, freshmen and sophomores raced off to find the Tree; which, of course, is what the day is all about. The sophomore president had secretly planted a seedling a few days before; if the freshmen found it first, they could yell their class cheer for the first time...
...freshman dresses as Cleopatra and the sophomore appropriately as General MacAnthony. When the General says, "I'm just an old sophomore spading away," that's the cue for the freshman class president to lead her class in a race against the sophomores to the secret location of the newly planted tree. If a freshman gets there first, her whole class can rightfully sing its cheers for the first time...