portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

"Heavens to Murgatroyd!" 'Richard Sherman' (The Seven Year Itch) and The Cowardly Lion in Waiting For Godot!

 







I found this picture a’wandering around the interwebbie mcthingiemabob and was remarking how amazing to think that here was Tom Ewell (The Seven Year Itch opposite Marilyn - although he had played the stage version nearly a thousand times with other actors in the MM role off and on Broadway) ) and Bert Lahr (The Wizard of Oz - he played the Lion) were starred here in a favourite play Becket’s legendary ‘Waiting For Godot’ in 1956

This amazed me and I would have loved to have seen it! (N.B. it was the premiere for American audiences of the play, which Lahr was very much struck by upon reading the script, but it bombed commercially with audience walkouts and the director playing it as 'light comedy' was probably a mistake!)


The two are so much (inextricably?) linked to others roles (films!) that this is why both are remarked upon here for my realising they had stage careers also!


note - Lahr’s son the eminent writer John Lahr, wrote Prick Up Your Ears a biography of Joe Orton which I prize

footnote: Heavens to Murgatroyd is attributed to Lahr, a notorious adliber, from another play and it was adopted into Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Snagglepuss!


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