Applause (musical) - History

History

Composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Lee Adams, (who had previously collaborated on the score to Bye Bye Birdie, among others) wanted to write a musical version of the 1950 movie, All About Eve. However, Twentieth Century Fox, which owned the rights to the movie, refused to to grant them the rights to the script nor the title. They were, however, able to purchase the stage rights to the short story on which All About Eve had been based, Mary Orr's "The Wisdom of Eve". The musical thus could not contain any dialogue or characters that had been created for the movie. In April 1969, it was announced that Strouse, Adams, and book writer Sidney Michaels were beginning to work on the show, with Lawrence Kasha producing. In July 1969, Movie star Lauren Bacall was cast as aging star Margo Channing, the role played by Bette Davis in All About Eve. Bacall greatly identified with the role, explaining, "The Margo Channing of Applause and myself were ideally suited. She was approaching middle age; so was I. She was being forced to face the fact that her career would have to move into another phase as younger women came along to play younger parts; so was I. And she constantly felt that the man she was in love with was going to go off with someone else, of course someone younger, and I, too, had had those feelings".

Bacall, Strouse, Adams, and Kasha came to the conclusion that Michaels's book was insufficient, so Kasha hired Betty Comden and Adolph Green to write a new book. They updated the story so it was set in the present day (1970) instead of the 1950 setting of All About Eve. Comden and Green also created new characters to replace the characters created specifically for the movie. Addison de Witt, the snide and articulate drama critic played in the film by George Sanders, was replaced by Howard Benedict, producer of the play in which Margo Channing is appearing. Margo's loyal assistant Birdie Coonan, the only character in the film who is suspicious of Eve from the start, was replaced by Duane Fox, Margo's gay hair stylist. Strouse commented that this change also made the show more relevant to the 1970s. (A memorable moment: Margo asks Duane "Are you going to be her hairdresser too?" Duane's response: "Only when she's laid out!") The show also eliminates the film's final sequence, in which an aspiring actress shows up in Eve's apartment, ready to do to her what Eve did to Margo. At a later point, Twentieth Century Fox reversed its original decision and granted the musical's creators full rights to All About Eve's script; however, by that time, the show was so far along in its development that major changes could not be made to the book. However, Strouse and Adams did write a song based on one of the film's most famous lines, "Fasten Your Seat Belts".