Word: lerner
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...ticket? Katharine Hepburn, for one thing. The musical interpretation of the life and times of Paris Couturière Gabrielle ("Coco") Chanel will be Hepburn's first Broadway performance since she played the title role in The Millionairess in 1952. Hepburn is not alone. Alan Jay Lerner did the book and lyrics, André Previn is making his Broadway debut with the music, Cecil Beaton is designing the costumes and sets, and Frederick Brisson (Damn Yankees, The Pajama Game, AIfie) is producing...
...Brisson has been laboring over this show for the past twelve years. "I'd been fascinated with Chanel since I was ten." Brisson says, "when I was at school in England. I was fascinated by this woman who cut her hair, smoked in public, wore pants." Brisson approached Lerner in 1960, but they did not start work together on Coco until 1965. By that time. Chanel had seen Lerner's My Fair Lady and loved it. "I was convinced that Lerner was incapable of doing anything vulgar," she said last week in Paris. "These people know what they...
André Previn was enlisted, even though he and Lerner never seemed to be able to get together. "It seems to me that we wrote Coco by screaming at each other as we passed in airports," Previn says. When they finally buckled down to it, they worked out an ego-saving shorthand to communicate lack of enthusiasm for each other's work. "If we didn't like something," Previn explains, "we'd say, 'It fits.' That's very polite, and it has the same result as if one of us said, That...
Paint Your Wagon has the same composer (Frederick Loewe) and lyricist (Alan Jay Lerner) as Camelot. It also exhibits the same lack of knack. Again there are broad performances more appropriate to marionettes than men. Again there is the literal representation of lyrics, as when the camera shows pines waving to illustrate the haunting song. They Call the Wind Maria. And again there is a backward alchemy, turning folklore into exaggeration...
When it opened on Broadway 18 years ago, Paint Your Wagon was slowed by a static book and a production as badly in need of girls as its miners. On paper, Lerner's improved libretto-and a score with some new music by Andre Previn-seemed to hit the mother lode. But that was before the director made it a fool's Gold Rush. Lee Marvin has done what he could to give the wagon a push onscreen. But the only motion that can give this Loganized vehicle velocity is promotion...