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Tuesday, April 08, 2014
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11 comments:
During some of the lean years
on Broadway in the 80s when a
few of the older Legit houses
were lost to the wrecking ball
the Mark Hellinger was sold to
a religious group that turned
it into the Times Square Church
which remains as such today
I've just learned that the Mark
Hellinger opened in 1930 as the
Warner's Hollywood a grand film
palace & was renamed in 1948
It became a church in 89
Back in the 1980s, I got to play in the pit orchestras for two Mickey Rooney shows SUGAR BABIES (which co-starred Ann Miller) and A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. SUGAR BABIES was by far the better show. Apparently someone had gotten grant money to search out old burlesque performers and transcribe their recollections of traditional burlesque house routines, jokes, and gags. The best of this material ended up in SUGAR BABIES. (Most of the humor was of the double entendre type.) I recall that the show also had a very good juggler – I don’t remember his name – who appeared in both the first and second acts. In San Diego, it appeared in the old Fox Theater. As I recall, some of seats had been wired for earphones for the hard-of-hearing.
This Broadway musical opened in
October of 79 & ran for nearly
3 years & the cast was under an
AGVA contract instead of AEA as
is the standard for Broadway
The American Guild of Variety
Artists vs Actors Equity Assn
Most of the Burlesque material
was from the show's creator &
theater historian Ralph Allen
who wrote his autobiography
"At My Mother's Knee & Other
Low Joints" & another musical
flop titled "Grind" years later
I worked as Production Manager
for Ralph when he became Roger
Stevens' producing partner at
the Kennedy Center in DC for
a few years in the 80s
Until some time in the 80s the
showgirls & clowns on RBBB were
under an AGVA contract until
the management was able to get
them to vote the union out &
they lost benefits & protection
I lied (again) as Ralph's flop
musical was "Honky Tonk Nights"
& not "Grind" which was also a
flop based on burlesque (sorry)
Chic, it was British entertainer Paul O'Grady who used the phrase for his autobiography. Allen used the line as the title for an academic paper he presented at a 1977 conference.
Dick Flint
Baltimore
I'm told the O'Grady book was
published in 2008 Dick so he
copied the title from Ralph who
was an incredible story teller
with great theatrical knowledge
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