History
Orson Welles had decided to make a musical out of one of his favorite childhood books, Around the World in Eighty Days. He wanted an entire circus on stage, a train running through the West, and had other extravagant production ideas. He raised money from Mike Todd, the producer William Goetz, and the holder of the European rights to the title, Alexander Korda. However, he had no money left for a star cast and used performers who were not well known. According to Charles Higham (writer of a highly critical Welles biography) "Porter wrote the songs far too quickly and badly".
The show had a cast of 70 and included four mechanical elephants and 54 stage hands. Mike Todd pulled out, and Welles put up his own money. He also borrowed from Columbia Pictures president, Harry Cohn, on a promise to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no fee. He kept his promise, making the film The Lady from Shanghai.
Playwright John van Druten described the musical as "enormous fun" and Joshua Logan said it was "fresh, witty, magical, exciting". However, with no story and unclear relationships between the characters, the show closed quickly, with Welles losing his savings, and the investors losing "large sums".
Read more about this topic: Around The World (musical)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)