seen from Maldives
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from South Africa
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Norway
seen from South Africa
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Norway
seen from United States
seen from Georgia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
Stills from the original 1978 production of On the Twentieth Century, directed by Hal Prince with book & lyrics Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Cy Coleman.
The cast featured Madeline Kahn (later replaced by Judy Kaye, appearing here in a photo with Kline), John Cullum, Imogene Coca, and Kevin Kline.
Photos via the New York Public Library digital collection.
City of Angels Appreciation Post
A 1940s Jazz Noir Metafiction Musical where the Real World and the Reel World begin to bleed into each other while a character stands up against his own author altering the script? YES.
So, I found out about City of Angels through Roger Allam just a couple days ago. Since then I got my hands on the Original 1989 Script, watched almost every single version there was to find in the depths of internet and was listening to the 1993 London Cast Recording on repeat.
The 1990 Tony Award and the San Jose's 1998 version were among the best, but I think that the 1993 West End might be my peesonal favourite one. Love the cast and the delivery.
You're Nothing Without Me is great, but what I really love is Martin Smith's Funny, Roger Allam's narrations throughout, and Haydn Gwynne as Oolie with You can Always Count on Me.
The ending was a bit rushed compared to the integrity of the plot, but I loved Stone taking over the typewriter and making Stine throw the entire script into the air.
'It's time I go back to the Reality of Fiction'
My understanding of the plot and details is still and in the process, but the more I watch it on the crappy VHS tapes, the more I appreciate it.
This thing is underrated. That's all I have to say for now.
(The 1993 Prince of Wales Theatre Photos make me a bit upset that there aren't any actual quality VHS Tapes recordings of it... If we don't count the 480p 1994 bootleg from a row that is being treasured in the American Musical Theatre Archives, where you can barely recognise a silhouette.)
I'm sentimental, so I walk in the rain I've got some habits even I can't explain... Why try to change me now?
SWEET CHARITY. ORIGINAL 1986 BROADWAY REVIVEL CAST RECORDING. POLYDOR RECORDS.
favorite quirked up composer?
Cy Coleman
Dave Malloy
Michael John LaChiusa
David Yazbek
William Finn
Pictures I took of my City of Angels (1989) Script Book
The cover! The beautiful cover art that is on everything City of Angels. [Image ID: A picture of the cover of the City of Angels script book, displaying the classic femme fatale woman with a pouty face holding a revolver in her right hand. Behind her is the city of LA, complete with spotlights reaching for the sky. There's a badge on the cover that proudly reads "the TONY winning musical". On the top is the title of the musical, along with credits to Larry Gelbart for writing the book, Cy Coleman for composing the music, and David Zippel for writing the lyrics. /end ID]
Wonderful stylistic art of the characters! [Image ID: Three pictures of drawings of the characters in City of Angels. The first two pictures feature Rachel York as Mallory Kingsley, Rene Auberjonois as Buddy Fiddler, Randy Graff as Donna, Scott Waara as Jimmy Powers, Dee Hoty as Bobbi, James Naughton as Stone, and Gregg Edelman as Stine in clockwise order from the top left. The third image features two standalone drawings, one of Randy Graff as Oolie, and the other of James Naughton as Stone. /end ID]
A note from Larry Gelbart! Transcribed, it says:
In the late 1940's, I collaborated on a short-lived (four performances), long-forgotten revue for the Los Angeles stage called My L.A.
The dismal experience had two positive effects. The bug to write for the theater had been implanted so deeply it could only be removed by major surgery (such surgery usually performed by theater critics- and always without anesthesia). And it demonstrated for me, since all of the material dealt with life in Los Angeles, just how theatrically marvelous that marvelously theatrical city was, given the golden, orangey look of the Nathaniel West coast, the flamboyant flora, the exotic folk, each tinged by some degree of sunstroke; qualities that made the town that made movies seem like a movie itself.
I just hoped that, somewhere down the freeway, I'd get another chance to use the city as the setting for a show, a show that would mercifully live for at least five performances.
Dissolve, as we members of the Writers Guild of America, West, are fond of saying, dissolve to December 11, 1989. Exterior. Broadway. Night. Camera pans the black tie crowd arriving by stretch limos for the opening of a new musical comedy. The music is by Cy Coleman, the lyrics are by David Zippel and I've written the book. The show is called City of Angels, and it is set in the L.A. of the 40's. My L.A., the L.A. of those relatively innocent, post-war, pre-smog days. And not only have Cy, David and I dealt with the show-like aspect of the place, we've also written a movie that we've placed in the show.
For City of Angels, in telling the story of the novelist, Stine, offers the audience not only scenes from his life, but from his work, as well. his work being the adaptation of one of his books into a screenplay built around a fictional hero, an ex-cop named Stone, those scenes add up to an onstage mini-private eye movie- a shred of Chandler, a dash of Hammett, so to speak.
The result is a show that works on the twin levels of those hardy perennials, reality and fantasy. The final result, however, is a show that works on four levels. The third is achieved when Stine's character, Stone, steps out of the pages of the screenplay to confront Stine in the real world, to insist that his creator maintain the same moral values he ascribes to his fictional alter ego.
The fourth level, or the play-within-the-play-within-the-play-within-the-play, is created by having our actors play more than one role. For instance, in the screenplay portions of the show, Stone's secretary, Oolie, is played by the same actress who plays Stine's employer, the producer-director, Buddy Fiddler's secretary, Donna.
In some instances, we first meet someone in the screenplay, say, Alaura Kingsley, and later discover the model for the character when the same actress appears as Buddy Fidler's wife, Carla Haywood.
We reverse the process by introducing Fidler himself, oozing fake charm, in Stine's life before revealing him in Stine's screenplay depicted as an equally odious studio boss, Irwin S. Irving, a man with absolutely no charm at all, real or fake.
It is our way of demonstrating how artists reward and/or punish the people in their private lives by the manner in which they portray them in their public works.
A case in point occurs in Act Two when Stine, accused of becoming a literary prostitute by his wife, Gabby, immediately bangs out a movie scene in which Stone discovers that the love of his life, Bobbi, has in fact become a literal prostitute. Both women, of course, are played by the same actress.
(It should be pointed out that Stine and Stone do not double. Each is played by a different actor.)
It is only when Stine, the writer, deals with his fictionalized version of those who populate his real life that he has any control over them. In reality, these role models are in no way guided by a few pecks at the keys of Stine's Corona. They have hearts and minds of their own. Stine may be able to think the same of the worldly Donna as he does with the simple minded Oolie, but Donna, he will come to learn to is great unhappiness, is very much Donna. She's not his creation, she's her own.
Lest any of that sound confusing, the reader is asked to remember that, when performed onstage, the show is color-coded: the real life passages staged in vivid colors, the reel life ones in glorious black and white- sets, costumes, props, everything but the actors' skin tones. Since we are never at a loss as to where we are, we are equally always sure of who is who.
This same sort of doubling took place during the creation of the show itself. Cy and David, though credited as composer and lyricist, also made an enormous contribution to the plotting and intricacy of the book. Ours was a bi-coastal collaboration since they're New Yorkers, while I live in Los Angeles, chiefly because I prefer to keep a firm grip on un-reality.
After a year or so of collaborating via long distance calls, we decided that they were no substitute for some one-on-one, or, in our case, three-on-three meetings. Accordingly, Cy and David flew out to California, where we had a ten-day marathon session alongside one swimming pool or another in Beverly Hills and Palm Springs. That week and a half, we agreed, was the best work experience any of us had ever known. The sessions, in the parlance of jazz, really cooked.
Only one question nagged at me as we constructed our outline. At least half the time, City of Angels would be the enactment of Stine's screenplay. These scenes would be written to be staged as though they were straight out of a 1940's Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe film. Could the characters in these scenes sing? Could the integrity of the film noir Stine was writing be maintained if Stone, his private eye, and other cinematic characters suddenly burst into song?
The answer to the question turned out to be a very helpful second question:
How believable is it for anyone to sing in a musical comedy? Especially in a reasonably modern American piece with none of the production trappings of another period?
By the time Cy and David returned to New York, we ad come up with a scene-by-scene, song-by-song breakdown that proved, at least for us, so sound and durable that, with minor changes, it remained very much the same show that opened on Broadway.
With as complete a blueprint as we had devised, the actual writing took a comparatively short time to accomplish. I don't say that with any sense of smugness, certainly not with total satisfaction. For me, the best work is the work I hate to finish. When I'm involved with characters I like (on and off the page), work on a play is more play than work.
City of Angels was that kind of project. A lifelong movie fan, it was a treat for me to be able to write a 40's movie from the vantage point of the 80's, and, being able to write about the minefield a screenwriter has to run in Hollywood was, for me, one from the heart, one that's been dented from time to time by a few real life Buddy Fidlers, who live to fix what isn't broken, until it finally is.
Let me add quickly, for all three authors, that we most certainly exclude Michael Blakemore from the Buddy Fidler section of this world. As our director, Michael graced the entire project with a sense of objectivity and a generosity that enhanced all that he touched. While he contributed to every aspect of the production, from the book of the show to the look f the show, we never felt that one suggestion he made, not one of his rare demands was based on ego. Whatever glory he sought was for the show, not for himself. He put his hand to everything without leaving a single fingerprint.
Another of our heroes in this most collaborative of collaborations was Robin Wagner, whose sets, from the black and white mean streets of L.A. to the beige bedrooms of Bel-Air, we're so totally in sync with our dramatic and musical vision for the show.
City of Angels was, for all of us, a labor of love. We invite you to join our affair.
Larry Gelbart, Beverly Hills, June 1990
(More images in part two, as I'm doing this on mobile!)
Favorite musical theater composer who didn't/doesn't do lyrics?
Alan Menken
Robert Lopez
Jeanine Tesori
Richard Rodgers
Harvey Schmidt
George Gershwin
Kurt Weill
Jerome Kern
Jerry Bock
John Kander
Leonard Bernstein
Cy Coleman
Leave anyone else you love in the tags! This list is specifically for composers who are not composer-lyricists!
