Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Ever Forget It)
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Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don't You Ever Forget It) is a musical with a book by Paul Jabara and Tom Eyen, music by Jabara, and lyrics by Jabara, David Debin, and Paul Issa.
The convoluted plot revolves around the misadventures of the title character (whose first name sports the extra "a" dropped by Barbra Streisand from her own) and her journey from a Brooklyn fish market to fame as a Hollywood gossip columnist and then a career culminating in an Academy Award nomination and a nervous breakdown. The score is a mix of disco and typical Broadway show tunes.
Jabara had written the show specifically for Bette Midler, who passed on the project. Eyen was brought in to overhaul the book and replace original director Ron Link, and Grover Dale was hired to assist Tony Stevens with the choreography.
The Broadway production began previews on November 26, 1973. In addition to Ellen Greene in the title role, the cast included Jabara, Wayne Cilento, Anita Morris, Thommie Walsh, and André DeShields.
Within days, it was obvious to everyone involved that it was beyond repair. On December 1, a small notice in the local newspapers announced the show would be closing that night, prior to its official opening.
The demand for tickets was immediate. Theatre buffs who revel in the calamitous as much as the classical were determined to see what was destined to go down in the Broadway annals as one of the all-time biggest flops. When the curtain went up that night, the cast was facing a sold-out house. Frank Rich of the New York Times noted that the musical had a small hardcore group of fans who had followed its evolution from the beginning and already had seen it several times: "In scattered pockets throughout the otherwise shell-shocked house were claques of theatergoers who sang along with the musical numbers and gave mini-standing ovations at the end of most of them." [1]
Producers Robert Stigwood and Ahmet Ertegun lost all of their $500,000 investment in the production.
[edit] Song list
Act I
- Academy Awards Theme
- Dear Miss Streisand
- Delivery Boys' Lament
- Me and My Perch
- Gorgeous Lily
- Get Your Show Rolling
- Hollywood! Hollywood!
- East Brooklyn Blues
- Broadway Rhythm
- Hollywood is Dying
- Broadway I Love You
- Raymond's Song
- Seduction Samba
- Rona, Mona and Me
- Working for Stella
- Silver Diamond Rhinestone Glasses
- Party Sickness
- Take Me Savage
- Overdose
- Get Your Show Rolling (Reprise)
Act II
- Academy Awards Theme (Reprise)
- Change in Raquel
- Raquel Gives the Dish
- Gorgeous Lily (Reprise)
- Ochos Rios
- Cobra Woman
- Things
- One Man
- We'll Be There
- One Man (Reprise)
- Broadway Rhythm (Reprise)
- We'll Be There (Reprise)
[edit] Reference
Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum, published by St. Martin's Press (1991), pages 29-31 (ISBN 0-312-06428-4)
