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Posted on 05/30/2026 3:40:06 PM PDT by Twotone
Bob Fosse's career as a Hollywood director looked to be over after just one film when the failure of Sweet Charity at the box office nearly took down Universal Studios in 1969 and ended the era of the big-budget movie musical. He'd always have work on Broadway but his new status as toxic in Hollywood was a blow his ego couldn't accept and he was desperate for a comeback.
The abiding fame of numbers like "Hey Big Spender" and "Rich Man's Frug" on Fosse highlight reels and as YouTube clips have lent Sweet Charity posthumous influence that nobody would have believed at the time. Fosse's problem, as far as his critics (and even some of his friends) were concerned was that he put far more effort into his musical numbers than whatever strung them together.
His solution was to make his reputation away from musicals and to this end he spent three months working on locations and budget (against the advice of his friend, director Stanley Donen) for a horror picture that would end up getting made several years later as Burnt Offerings.
Somewhere else during this wilderness period he was drawn out of his endless funk again by a script called The Eagle of Naptown; that would also fall by the wayside though it did end up getting made in 1978 by Peter Yates as Breaking Away. Somewhere out there an alternate universe hosts a fascinating and horrifying Fosse filmography.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
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I will never understand how musicals with hundreds of prancing men do not become blockbusters.
I played Joel Grey’s character “MC” in my college’s production of “Cabaret” and had the most fun I’ve ever had in playing community theater. It was a role where there were basically no limits on my performance and I could chew up the stage and the scenery to my heart’s content.
I saw Joel Gray in a one man show a year after his Cabaret fame. He was incredible.
I am not a fan of musicals, but this film is one of my top 50 films. Perhaps its that period of the loose morals Weimar Republic and the “strict” authoritarians of the up and coming National Socialists that set the scene in Berlin that drags me in. Liza’s performance of course was great. I knew a great many girls that were like her-—tossing aside the Mid-America morality once free of mummy and daddy, (though not their money, right?)
Perhaps as explained in the review that all the musical numbers were done in context of the Kit Kat Klub that makes it not a musical, but a period piece with music. I dunno.
Minnelli was hot back then.
“Tomorrow Belongs To Me” is one of the most terrifying scenese ever, how the mood suddenly shifts, and the poor old man, who knows what’s coming.
Truly, it does give one the chilly-willys because we know what’s coming, right?
Well fiddly dee.
It’s Showtime!
Ping!
I always loved Pippin. Used to play that record with my Grandparents all the time.
LOL!!!
Like you, I don’t care for musicals, but I’ve watched this film numerous times.
+1
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