Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Not Since Carrie Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum 2. CARRIE (1988) The legend of Carrie looms large. So large that she even inspired the best-selling book Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Flops . This show was conceived by songwriters Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, who envisioned Carrie as a modern-day operatic tragedy (they came up with the idea after seeing a production of Parsifal ). Eventually The Royal Shakespeare Company, flush with cash after presenting the world premiere of Les Miserables , and West German producer Fredrich Kurz agreed to produce the show. Carrie premièred at the RSC’s main stage at Stratford-On-Avon. The inaugural production was, by all accounts, an unmitigated disaster. Barbra Cook, who was due to make her long awaited return to Broadway as Carrie’s Jesus freak mother was nearly decapitated during the Stratford run. Despite this myriad of problems Carrie went right to Broadway where it opened in May of 1988, past the Tony Award deadline but way prior to the next season. During the shows sixteen previews and five regular performances audiences watched an out of control musical that included typical high school teenagers dressed in studded leather, a young bully smearing pig blood on his chest, a massive staircase descending from the heavens and a blood- soaked prom queen getting stabbed by her mother (Betty Buckley, who played a sympathetic gym coach in the 1976 film version, took over for Cook on Broadway). And yet as out of control as Carrie was, ask anyone who saw the show (and if everyone who claims they saw it actually did it would probably still be running) and they will tell you that in the midst of all this chaos was some truly soaring material, that the scenes between Carrie (Linzi Hatley) and her mother were fantastic, and that Betty Buckley gave the performance of her career. While there was intense interest in an encore production of Carrie Stephen King, who hated the show, refused to allow it to be revived. While many fans yearned for a cast recording Gore and Pitchford refused, wanting to put the whole debacle behind them (though one lovely song, “Unsuspecting Hearts” was recorded several times). Alas, Carrie did not go silently into the night. Die-hard theater geeks distributed backstage demo recordings and a pirated video of the Stratford production showed up on YouTube nearly two decades later. Schools and theater companies put on their own unlicensed productions, sometimes incorporating new changes. Realizing that the show had a life of its own, Stephen King and the creators eventually relented and allowed a revival to be produced Off- Broadway. Generally well received, this new production strove to emphasize what was good about Carrie (the intense scenes between mother and daughter) and omit what was bad (just about everything else). This revised production has already had three productions on the West Coast and may well continue to be performed. But nothing will surpass the cachet of having seen that original train wreck that was, in the worlds of Ken Mandelbaum, “every kind of flop musical combined”. Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. 372p. illus. index. $14.95. ISBN 0-312-08273-8. Synopsis. Flop musicals, unless they are of unusual importance or interest, are rarely mentioned in general books about Broadway musicals. Information about these musicals can be extremely hard to come by even for researchers. This book thus stands as the only substantial overview of this peculiar "genre," which has its devoted fans in much the same way as do bad movies. There's one big difference, though. Because of the nature of musicals and the way most people are forced to interact with them--via music CD rather than stage production, especially in the case of flops--a flop musical can have an A-level score that, when divorced from the rest of the show, can stand with the best of the entire genre. Not Since Carrie does its best both to illuminate flop musicals and to separate the wheat from the chaff. The book starts with a substantial prologue about the 1988 flop Carrie , based on the Stephen King novel. Carrie , as the title of the book suggests, has become a benchmark for musical badness; Mandelbaum later makes the case that Carrie was a kind of uberflop, embodying all of the different traits that previous flops possessed in singular. The eight chapters of the book deal with these traits and their associated musicals. Note that many musicals could have been classified into more than one chapter (e.g., Wildcat was both a star flop and a Cy Coleman flop); Mandelbaum included them only once according to where he felt they belonged (e.g., Wildcat appears under "Star Flops"). He provides an appropriate amount of information for each flop, at least a page and often much more than that for interesting shows. When possible, he provided pictures of Playbills or scenes from the shows (usually publicity stills). Chapter 1 covers "Catastrophes and Camp"--musicals that were horrors from start to finish, or that had that "so bad they're fun" air. Examples include Kelly (the benchmark flop before Carrie ), Breakfast at Tiffany's (so bad that David Merrick took the unprecedented step of shutting the show down in previews), Legs Diamond , Dude and Via Galactica (incoherencies in the post- Hair era), Portofino (possibly the worst musical ever), Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (an intentionally camp musical), Home Sweet Homer , Into the Light (it attempted to prove the Shroud of Turin real and starred Dean Jones), Chu Chem (a Buddhist-Jewish musical), and Whoop-Up (maybe the ultimate trash musical; drawn from Stay Away, Joe , which was also a bad Elvis movie). Chapter 2, "Star Flops," deals with star vehicles that failed. Did you know that Gwen Verdon and Ethel Merman were the only two stars who were never in a flop? Everyone else, even the redoubtable Mary Martin, appeared in at least one flop (Martin's was Jennie ). The chapter is divided into big names, medium- or never-quite-made-it names, and one- and two-shots. Stars covered include Ray Bolger ( All American , proving that Mel Brooks didn't always have the hit touch, and Come Summer ), Carol Channing ( The Vamp ), Robert Preston (a whole bunch, including Mack and Mabel ), Judy Holliday ( Hot Spot ), Alfred Drake (a trio), John Raitt ( Three Wishes for Jamie , A Joyful Noise ), Barbara Cook (a whole bunch), Anthony Newley ( Chaplin ), and Ginger Rogers ( The Pink Jungle ). Second-tiers include Nanette Fabray, Helen Gallagher, Nancy Walker, Joel Grey, Dorothy Loudon, and Eddie Foy, Jr. The one-shots were Lucille Ball, Bette Davis, Julie Harris, Maureen O'Hara, Shirley Jones, Cesare Siepi, and Alexis Smith. Chapter 3, "Major Writers," means flops associated mainly with major-league creative individuals. These flop shows, or at least their scores, tend to be more interesting and/or better than usual. Mandelbaum starts, naturally enough, with Rodgers and Hammerstein ( Pipe Dream ). Thereafter, we have Rodgers alone ( Rex , I Remember Mama ), Cole Porter ( Out of This World ), Frank Loesser ( Greenwillow , Pleasures and Palaces ), Jule Styne (a whole bunch), Arthur Schwartz ( The Gay Life , Jennie ), Noel Coward ( The Girl Who Came to Supper ), Mark Blitzstein ( Reuben Reuben ), Richard Adler (everything he did after Jerry Ross died), Stephen Sondheim (even though most of his productions lost money, Mandelbaum doesn't count them because they ran long and won critical acclaim; he focuses on Anyone Can Whistle and Merrily We Roll Along ), Charles Strouse (six consecutive flops--my, my, my), Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick ( The Body Beautiful , Tenderloin ), John Kander (without Fred Ebb-- A Family Affair ), Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt ( Celebration ), Cy Coleman ( Home Again, Home Again; Welcome to the Club ), Larry Gelbart ( The Conquering Hero ), Meredith Willson (the notorious 1491 ), Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire ( Love Match ), and Jerry Herman ( Dear World , etc.) Chapter 4 covers flops where "The Movie Was Better"--bad adaptations. (As an aside, I'm reminded of a stupid article I read either on MSNBC.com or in Time , where someone claimed that the success of The Producers was going to result in a spate of movie-based musicals, which was bad because in previous years, there had been few such musicals. Guess the writer never heard of Applause , A Little Night Music, Sweet Charity , etc. etc.) Movies subsequently trashed on stage include movie musicals ( Gigi ), movies with musical-inappropriate subject matter ( The Yearling --why would anyone think that would make a good musical?), badly-realized properties ( The World of Henry Orient , on stage as Henry, Sweet Henry ), and foreign-film adaptations ( The Baker's Wife ). Chapter 5, which every budding musical writer should read, is "Don't Let This Happen to You," listing nine musical no-no's that spelled disaster for the creators foolhardy enough to disregard them: Don't musicalize works which can't be musicalized ( Shogun ); don't musicalize works that don't need music ( Cyrano ); don't start with a bad/impossible idea ( How Now, Dow Jones ); don't attempt to musicalize a major work if you're not up to it ( Billy , based on Billy Budd ); don't write shows without an audience ( Raggedy Ann ); don't fool around with a good source ( At the Grand , based on Grand Hotel ; the far more successful remake returned to much of what made the original source great); don't do the same thing twice ( The Student Gypsy , a faded Xerox of Little Mary Sunshine ); don't use old music (I think this commandment has lost its punch, frankly, with all those dumb pop-rock revues-masquerading-as-musicals, like Buddy and Mamma Mia! , being dumped on us from London); and don't do sequels ( Annie 2 , Bring Back Birdie ). Chapter 6 is when Mandelbaum starts getting into "Missed Opportunities"--shows that could have been good but weren't, usually because of a good original property that was mishandled. Shows like Saratoga , Flora, the Red Menace , Doonesbury , and Sophie basically wasted good concepts. Chapter 7, "Not Bad," covers shows that didn't quite click; pleasant mediocrities, shows with not-insurmountable problems, or shows never really given a chance. Bajour ; Do I Hear a Waltz? ; House of Flowers ; 70, Girls, 70 ; Baby ; and Drat! The Cat! are featured, among many others. Finally, chapter 8 deals with "Heartbreakers and Cream": musicals with exceptional scores and high (but failed) ambitions. Here we find The Grass Harp , Juno , Mack and Mabel , Grind , Rags , 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue , Flahooley , Mata Hari , Candide , Simply Heavenly , The Human Comedy , and The Golden Apple . An Epilogue covers the Carrie fiasco in more detail, examining what led to the bad decisions behind the musical. Evaluation. Not Since Carrie is, in my opinion, one of the two best books ever written about musicals (the other being The Season ). Indeed, this book is so well known among show music fans that there is an entire series of Amazon lists based on the chapters. I have read and re-read it at least half a dozen times, using it as a purchase guide and comparing my opinion of certain scores with Mandelbaum's. Mandelbaum is, of course, one of today's most respected Broadway critics, and has penned several other books on the subject, including the definitive history of A Chorus Line . You will also find him writing for CD booklets, often providing history and opinion for flop musicals that have been reissued or remastered. I like his style: he's clear-voiced and respectful of those shows deserving of respect, but never fails to be cheerfully scornful of the more abominable flops. His opinions are pretty reliable, too. At least in terms of matching up with my own taste, I find that Mandelbaum's evaluations usually coincide with mine. (It's interesting to note, however, that in his book he's rather noncommittal about Breakfast at Tiffany's music, but he's quite enthusiastic about it in the CD booklet of the recent studio cast recording.) The book could have, perhaps, been arranged more usefully; internal cross-references would really have helped. It's awkward to have to trace a particular composer's (or star's) musicals via the Index, and it's not always clear that more material from a particular individual exists. For example, most of Cy Coleman's shows fall under Major Writer flops, but Wildcat is a Star Flop--and there's nothing in the Major Writer section to point a reader back to Wildcat . Similarly, most of Robert Preston's flops are categorized as Star Flops, and Jerry Herman's flops are, of course, Major Writer flops, but their best and most famous flop show, Mack and Mabel , shows up way at the end as a Heartbreaker flop, which will doubtless be confusing to readers expecting to find at least a cross- reference to that seminal flop. Perhaps a future edition can contain an appendix or front matter that lists all musicals associated with an individual, along with page numbers. I'd also love to see more pictures from the shows, but they probably don't exist. Another useful section would be one that lists highly recommended titles, since right now you have to read every entry to find out which has a good score and which should be avoided. Summary. This book is an essential purchase for the serious and adventurous Broadway fan who wants to go beyond the standards, who wants to investigate the lesser-known work of a composer or star--and who wants to understand why a show can flop despite the contributions of talented people. My understanding of show music has been utterly transformed by this book. I will be forever grateful to Ken Mandelbaum for turning me on to these scores. Review copyright 2001, D. Aviva Rothschild. All rights reserved I invite other reviews, or comments about the review above. All submitted material will be properly credited and copyrighted to the submitters. Please see the submissions page for more information. Or, if you're not in a mood to publish, just let me know your opinion of this review. Return to Bursting with Song Return to Rational Magic current issue Go back to the Rational Magic home page. ISBN 13: 9780312064280. Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. Mandelbaum, Ken. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. Offers a behind-the-scenes look at the development of almost two hundred musical flops that played Broadway between 1950 and 1990. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Ken Mandelbaum is a theater critic. He is the author of A Chorus Line and the Musicals of Michael Bennett and Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops . "Highly readable. strong opinions backed up by solid judgment. Mr. Mandelbaum has seen nearly everything and is not easily taken in. Justified affection for worthy scenes, wisely tempered by shrewd analysis. Mr. Mandelbaum has a very good ear that leads him to champion scores that have had smaller cult followings. As befits the subject, Not Since Carrie is full of entertaining backstage reportage. The illustrations are also fun and wittily chosen, whether embarrassing production photos or sadly hopeful posters and advertising."--Frank Rich , The New York Times/WQXR. "A must-read."--Alex Witchel, The New York Times. "Best theater book of 1991. breathtaking research and pointed, but not cruel, wit."--David Patrick Stearns, USA Today. "Of all the theater books I've come across lately, none has entertained me more than Ken Mandelbaum's Not Since Carrie , a lively, illustrated account of forty years of Broadway musical flops."--Doug Watt, New York Daily News. "An enormously amusing read. I cannot recall enjoying a theatre book as much as Not Since Carrie in a long time."--Hap Erstein, The Washington Times. "The book we have all been waiting for. Not only does [Mandelbaum] identify more than two hundred flops by name, he analyzes each and every one of them at some length and misses very little in the way of backstage intrigue. Mandelbaum's chapter "Don't Let This Happen to You" could double as a primer for people who write musicals or aspire to write them. Fascinating book, this-- most definitely not a flop. It practically reads itself. And just chockful of stuff that's hard to find elsewhere."--Nels Nelson, Philadelphia Daily News. Not Since Carrie. Not Since Carrie is Ken Mandelbaum's brilliant survey of Broadway's biggest flops. This highly readable and entertaining book highlights almost 200 musicals created between 1950 and 1990, framed around the notorious musical adaptation of Carrie , and examines the reasons for their failure. "Essential and hilarious," raves The New Yorker , and The New York Times calls the book "A must-read." Reseñas de los clientes. At Last!! Absolutely one of the best books on musical theatre ever written. Highly entertaining to read, well researched, and a fascinating look at shows that didn’t succeed on Broadway -and why. My print copy is so worn from rereading that it’s falling apart. A must-read for anyone interested in the theatre! Not since Carrie : 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum (1992, Trade Paperback, Revised edition) С самой низкой ценой, совершенно новый, неиспользованный, неоткрытый, неповрежденный товар в оригинальной упаковке (если товар поставляется в упаковке). Упаковка должна быть такой же, как упаковка этого товара в розничных магазинах, за исключением тех случаев, когда товар является изделием ручной работы или был упакован производителем в упаковку не для розничной продажи, например в коробку без маркировки или в пластиковый пакет. См. подробные сведения с дополнительным описанием товара.