Lorelei
OPENING: January 27, 1974
CLOSING: November 3, 1974
Seen: September 1974
LOCATION: Palace Theatre
By 1974, My dad had graduated college and was living in the city. There aren’t many playbills from this period but by the end of 1974 they began to reappear. Our next show in his lineup was the second show he saw that year. It was the Carol Channing star-vehicle Lorelei.
As of February 2023, we are in a period of TV history where producers are trying to draw in audiences by rebooting fan favorites of yesteryear. Classics such as Hawaii 5-0, Magnum PI, and Macgyver have all been revived in recent years. The same goes for more recent beloved shows such as Gossip Girl, Charmed, and That 70’s Show. They all have been resurrected with new casts; some use the same characters with new casts while others continue the story years into the future. This nostalgia for the familiar is not a new concept, nor is it limited to the small screen. It is what composer Jule Styne and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green decided to fall back on in the early 70’s when they decided that their 1949 hit musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, needed to make a reappearance on Broadway.
Why didn’t they just revive it? None of my sources have a clear answer to this. What they did instead was to shorten the original storyline to make it a flashback within a larger story. My theory is that they did this to maintain as much as they could from the original 1949 production as they could, including bringing back their original star, Carol Channing.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is the story of Lorelei Lee, a young girl who boards a cruise ship with the intention of finding herself a rich husband. It was a fun piece of fluff which left us with several musical theatre standards, including the still popular Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend (Sorry Theatre Kids – Moulin Rouge and Nicole Kidman were not the ones who brought this one to the forefront). Playing the role of Lorelei was a young Carol Channing, effectively launching her star.
By the early 70’s, Channing had reached the legendary status that we associate with her today thanks to her fresh turn off of Hello, Dolly!. But despite the infamy she reached with Dolly, Lorelei still stuck with Channing. It is my personal belief that when Styne, Comden, and Green started discussing the possibility of bringing Gentlemen Prefer Blondes back to Broadway, they soon realized that the role was still associated with Channing and it would be a hard sell if she were not playing it. But twenty five years had passed; how would the much older Channing possibly still be convincing as the young and naïve Lorelei?
They responded to this by intentionally making Lorelei older with a slightly older script. In the new version, she has been recently widowed and is remembering the exuberance of her youth. I suppose that they thought they were being clever.
Clever or not, when the show – rebranded simply as “Lorelei”, did an out of town tryout and then toured prior to it’s Broadway opening, there was one consistent comment: Channing was the only good part of the show. Clive Barnes, ever the charmer, even took that a step further and said that while Channing’s performance was enjoyable, the knowledge that it was a flashback did not mitigate the fact that Channing was simply too old to believably play Lorelei. But despite the vitriol, Channing managed to nab herself another Tony nomination and managed to keep the show open for a solid ten months.
All in all, it was a good effort by the producers. But in the end, Lorelei just wasn’t cut out to be a hit. And that’s okay – not every show can be. But it’s a piece of musical theatre history that stands as an experiment from a time period that was all about the experiments.
And for that, it should be cherished.
CAST: REPLACEMENT
LORELEI LEE: Carol Channing
HENRY SPOFFORD: Lee Roy Reams
LORD FRANCIS BEEKMAN: Jack Fletcher
LADY PHYLLIS BEEKMAN: Jean Bruno
JOSEPHUS GAGE: Brandon Maggart
DOROTHY SHAW: Tamara Long
GUS ESMOND: Paul Dumont
BARTENDER: Ray Cox
MRS ELLA SPOFFORD: Space Left Blank
GEORGE: Gregg Harlan
PIERRE: Ray Cox
CHARLES: Robert Riker
ROBERT LEMANTIER: Joe Bratcher
LOUIS LEMANTIER: Ian Tucker
SIMONE DUVAL: Gina Ramsel
PHEASANT (UN OISEAU DANS LE MATIN!): Meg Bussert
CAVIER (UN BON OEUF!): Brenda Holmes
LOBSTER (UN DELICIEUX PINCE ROUGE!): Roxanna White
SALADE (A VOTRE SANTE!): Kerry McGrath
DESSERT (VIVE LA GLACE CHAUDE!): Carol Channing
MAITRE D: Paul Eichel
MASTER OF CEREMONIES: Robert Riker
ANNOUNCER: Ray Cox
ENGINEER: Bob Daley
MR ESMOND: Joe Bratcher
BRIDESMAIDS: Meg Bussert, Bonnie Hinson, Kerry McGrath, Roxanna White
SHIPS PERSONNEL, PASSENGERS, TOURISTS, OLYMPIC TEAM MEMBERS, WAITERS, WEDDING GUESTS: Meg Bussert, Joela Flood, Marian Haraldson, Bonnie Hinson, Brenda Holmes, Karen Jablons, Linda Lee MacArthur, Kerry McGrath, Gina Ramsel, Roxanna White, Joe Bratcher, Ray Cox, Bob Daley, Paul Eichel, Gregg Harlan, Jamie Haskins, Bob Heath, Randy Hugill, Wayne Mattison, Robert Riker, Rick Schneider, Ian Tucker
UNDERSTUDIES: Brenda Holmes (Lorelei); Gina Ramsel (Dorothy); Marian Haraldson (Mrs. Spofford, Lady Phyllis Beekman); Ray Cox (Gus and Gage); Wayne Mattison (Robert Lemantier, Henry Lemantier); Paul Eichel (Lord Francis Beekman); Bob Daley (George); and Randy Hugill (Louis Lemantier).
Bordman, Gerald. “American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle.” New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1978.
Barnes, Clive. “Theater: Channing as Lorelei Again”. New York Times, January 28, 1974. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/28/archives/theater-channing-as-lorelei-again.html?searchResultPosition=1
Halzack, Sarah. “Carol Channing, A Broadway Legend, Dies at 97.” The Lily News, January 15, 2019. https://www.thelily.com/carol-channing-a-broadway-legend-dies-at-97/
Internet Broadway Database. “Carol Channing” www.ibdb.com. Accessed February 2023.
Kerr, Walter. “Carol Is A Show’s Best Friend” New York Times, February 3, 1974. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/03/archives/carol-is-a-shows-best-friend-carol-is-a-shows-best-friend.html?searchResultPosition=2
TheatreGold. “Lorelei 1974 Musical Carol Channing.” Theatregold.com, November 1, 2016. https://www.theatregold.com/lorelei-1974-musical-carol-channing/
Wilson, John S. “Rerun Time on Broadway.” The New York Times, August 11, 1974. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/11/archives/rerun-time-on-broadway.html?searchResultPosition=13
