Word: flopped
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...told him that I thought there was little chance Boys in the Band would be a total flop. "I guess that's what Otto Preminger said after Hurry, Sundown, " he answered quickly. "Let's put it this way: If it's a hit, I'll get another job. And if it's a dog, I won't even be able to get Zanuck's maid on the phone." He started to laugh again, catching my eyes as he did so. Crowley and I were both still laughing-tipsily, loudly-when the press agent came to take him away...
...besides being commercial failures, these shows all have one other-far more important-common denominator. In nearly every case. their scores were influenced most by one man, the granddaddy of forgotten musicals, Kurt Weill. In other words if you are going to write a good flop musical, you had best throw away your Rodgers and Hammerstein albums and start tuning into The Threepenny Opera. And, even if you are not planning to start turning out such wayward masterpieces, you should turn on to Weill, because, quite simply, he has written some of the great songs of this century...
...flop percentage is the same for little movies as for blockbusters-about 70%. The Hollywood rule of thumb is that a picture must gross 2½ times its cost to break even. As Warner's President Ted Ashley puts it, "If you get hurt with the $15 million films, you get de-balled." Though his $20 million Hello, Dolly! may nose into the black eventually. Fox Board Chairman Darryl F. Zanuck confesses that he would be some kind of nut to launch such an extravagant film today. "Once you're over the $4,000,000 category," he figures...
...number is to tell us (a) Georgy has rapport with kids and loves them and (b) she is kooky. But it doesn't work because (a) We don't know whether these kids are worth loving or even what her relationship to them is and (b) flip-flop clothing and jumping up and down to the steps of a mundane choreographer don't communicate a real kookiness, but only serve as flashcards for a kind of showbiz cutesiness. At best, the number reminds us of Lynn Redgrave's fleshed-out Georgy and her scene with the kids in the film...
Coco spent many lean years in New York "living in $8-a-week rooms on West 57th Street and appearing in one flop after another." In between were "all the cliche jobs actors do for money: I sold tops at Gimbels, was a waiter at a milk bar under Grand Central Station." Meanwhile, he was acting (six Broadway shows, 25 off-Broadway), collecting two Obies for off-Broadway performances (The Moon in the Yellow River and Fragments), and being entirely forgotten by audiences and casting directors when his shows were over...