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Gotta love Ann.  Her dancer's diet eating only eggs...yuck.   Jerry Herman writing both Mame and Hello Dolly: strange?

 

At least they got rid of "those DTTs" on our vegetables.   Maybe Harry Carter's college was Delta-Tor-Tor and not Delta-delta-Tor. 

 

I wish I someone would upload the commercial Ann did (70s?80s?) lending her name to some fad product that promises to get rid of cellulite---or as Ann pronounced it Cellu-LEET.  Isn't is Cellu-light?

Ending with "Take it from me, Ann Miller!"

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My attempt to dub the CD recording of Ann's "I'm Still Here" from this "Follies" into the only existing video from the 1998 Papermill production. I wish the cameraperson had been paying attention. Ann walks out of shot a couple of times. Perhaps he/she was too mesmerized by Ann.

This process is more complicated than it may sound. Phrasing and pace are vastly different between the live recording audio and the CD. I had to speed up the CD track by 10 percent and it still required many many individual edits, speeding up or slowing down 10 second segments to get them to match.

There was talk of this going to Broadway which would have been a great last hurrah for Ann who died 5 or 6 years later.

 

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Great video, Neil!

 

Sondheim allowed Ann to change the tempo on stage, but insisted she sing it as written for the cast recording. Despite being about 25 years too old, Ann was great casting as Carlotta. The other members of the cast said Ann was heartbroken when the show did not move to Broadway. There was a Broadway revival of Follies three years later and no one from the Papermill cast was allowed to audition for it. Polly Bergen made a major comeback as Carlotta and received the show's best reviews.

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She's Still Ha'r!

I'd like to see Punchy Players do a song parody of this with special Johnnie Lucille lyrics- or maybe one of our very talented Lounge members could take a stab at it?

 

Allegedly (and I don't remember where I read this), Ann's performance was so rousing, on some nights she would get a standing ovation MID-SONG. I certainly hope that's true!

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Sondheim allowed Ann to change the tempo on stage, but insisted she sing it as written for the cast recording. Despite being about 25 years too old, Ann was great casting as Carlotta. The other members of the cast said Ann was heartbroken when the show did not move to Broadway. There was a Broadway revival of Follies three years later and no one from the Papermill cast was allowed to audition for it. Polly Bergen made a major comeback as Carlotta and received the show's best reviews.

 

Heartbroken? The poor Star Lady. Why weren't they allowed to audition?

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She's Still Ha'r!

I'd like to see Punchy Players do a song parody of this with special Johnnie Lucille lyrics- or maybe one of our very talented Lounge members could take a stab at it?

 

Allegedly (and I don't remember where I read this), Ann's performance was so rousing, on some nights she would get a standing ovation MID-SONG. I certainly hope that's true!

 

 

Forbidden Broadway did an Ann Miller spoof, "I'm Still Weird." I'm sure some of our resident geniuses could do a better job.

 

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Heartbroken? The poor Star Lady. Why weren't they allowed to audition?

 

The Widow Goldman put the kibosh on anyone from the Papermill production from auditioning. She supposedly thought the production was second rate, but the real reason seems to be that she had promised the Roundabout Theatre Company the Broadway rights to Follies in exchange for them also doing a production of The Lion in Winter. Kaye Ballard thought that Sondheim was the one who prevented Follies from transferring to Broadway and The Widow Goldman agreed to be the bad guy, but others refute this. Everyone associated with the production used the word "heartbroken" to describe Ann when the Broadway move didn't happen. 

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Just comparing casts, I would probably prefer the Papermill version over the 2001 revival. It's interesting that Liliane Montevecchi and Phyliss Newman reprised their roles of Solange and Stella from the 1985 concert, where I thought they did a fine job. Dee Hoty certainly gives off a very Alexis Smith-ish vibe, which, for me, is ideal when someone is playing Phyliss. Even if the show had transferred to Broadway, who knows how well it would have done. Sondheim shows don't perform well. Maybe more people would have come if they had included a Phantom-style chandelier stunt where Ann's wig flies off her head and out into the audience...

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