Word: cocas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lines for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were two of the arts' most potent names: Lyricist Alan Jay Lerner of My Fair Lady and Camelot fame and West Side Story Composer Leonard Bernstein. The show, about the lives and times of 13 early Presidents, was a Bicentennial natural, and the Coca-Cola Co. eagerly footed the $1.2 million cost of bringing a 45-member cast and a 30-piece orchestra together for five weeks of rehearsals in New York and tryouts in Philadelphia and Washington. But when it finally reached Broadway's Mark Hellinger Theater, the critics found its view...
...which the entire show turned, was an incredibly complex white-black Upstairs, Downstairs, a slice of a century of White House life expressed as a play within a play. Last week the survivors of the disaster were wondering what went right. Given the magic of the names involved, Coca-Cola and most of the 1600 actors bought the project on blind faith. Versatile Lead Ken Howard, who played all 13 Presidents, took the job without having seen a line of Lerner's book. British Actress Patricia Routledge, who played all the First Ladies, had heard only one song...
...months of war, oil lamps had been supplanted by the light bulb, the gourd by the bidet, pineapple juice by Coca Cola, lotto by roulette, Rocambole by Pearl White, the messenger boy's donkey by the telegraphist's bicycle...
...image that one people conjures up about another. Pell-mell you would doubtless see the landing of the G.I.s in Normandy, Roosevelt, Ike and Kennedy, Wall Street, cavalcades of Indians in the Far West, Al Capone, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali, pretty majorettes, West Side Story, bourbon and Coca-Cola, man's first steps on the moon-with a musical background of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington...
...Broadway musical based on 100 years of White House history seemed like a Yankee Doodle dandy idea. And 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have the services of Leonard (West Side Story) Bernstein, Alan Jay (My Fair Lady) Lerner, a Bicentennial theme and almost $1 million in backing from the Coca-Cola Co. Alas, a pre-Broadway tour met with disastrous reviews. Despite considerable reworking, when the show opened last week in New York City it was plain that Coke had bought fizzle, not fizz. Observed TIME Theater Critic Ted Kalem: "The British burned the White House in 1812, and Lerner...