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OT: Fosse/Verdon Coming to FX (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sam Rockwell, Michelle Williams)

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
3 replies | jump to latest

Some might recall that my favorite film of each year for these three years in a row are as follows:

1958: Damn Yankees
1959: North by Northwest
1960: Psycho

Yes...I know that the proper completion of the troika is to put The Greatest Movie Ever Made(says Sight and Sound) , Vertigo, in the 1958 slot but....Vertigo has some weaknesses to me, and though it isn't as great as Vertigo, Damn Yankees is a lot more fun.

Coming next year(or thereafter) an 8-episode FX series that, I expect, will devote at least an episode or two to Damn Yankees.

For the series is called Fosse/Verdon, its about the teaming, romance and marriage of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon and, well...Damn Yankees is really pretty much the ONLY movie that Gwen Verdon ever did. And Bob Fosse is in it -- a lot less than Gwen Verdon. But they dance together...

I'm not entirely up on the Fosse/Verdon marriage and collaboration. Did Verdon do Sweet Charity on Broadway? Did Fosse direct it?(I know he directed the movie with Shirley MacLaine)

...of course, a more famous movie -- "All That Jazz"(1979) -- directed BY Bob Fosse, gave us a fictional Bob Fosse(Roy Scheider) with a fictional Gwen Verdon...and a host of other female girlfriends, one night stands...and another wife? Bob wasn't very faithful to Gwen. I assume that will make it into the series.

For the FX series, Oscar winner Sam Rockwell is playing Fosse; Michelle Williams is playing Verdon(I can't recall, has SHE won an Oscar?) and current musical hot shot Lin-Manuel Miranda is producing and overseeing it.

Given the Damn Yankees angle...I'm in. And thus I have yet another future filmic type thing to look forward to, a year hence. Can't die yet!

PS. Wanna see Bob Fosse do a fun song and dance? Watch him play a "snake"(all in black) in The Little Prince(1974?)...in which Gene Wilder sings and dances a fox...its a fantasy but a sweet and slight one. A strange little movie by director Stanley Donen(Singin' in the Rain, Charade....Damn Yankees.) I think it failed because Richard Kiley took the lead instead of Frank Sinatra as intended. Or maybe some other reason.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Oscar winner Sam Rockwell is playing Fosse; Michelle Williams is playing Verdon

Can these guys really, no-kidding-around dance? They need to be plausible as the best dancers on Broadway of their time. I'm skeptical.

And, yes, Verdon was the original Charity Valentine, and the original Roxie in Chicago (Verdon brought the idea for Chicago to Fosse back in the early 1960s). Fosse died in her arms from a heart attack walking home to his hotel from a rehearsal of a DC revival of Sweet Charity that he and Verdon were supervising. Pretty dramatic!

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Can these guys really, no-kidding-around dance? They need to be plausible as the best dancers on Broadway of their time. I'm skeptical.

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Ha. "Never thought of that." Dazzled by the Oscar cred, I guess.

But thinking about it, Roy Scheider wasn't known as a dancer when he played a fictionalized Fosse FOR Fosse in All That Jazz(after fellow Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss dropped out!) ...and he did OK. (I certainly bought the sinewy Scheider as a dancer more than I could have the cherubic Dreyfuss.)

I suppose the series will not have Fosse and Verdon dancing all the time -- or a lot of the time, and maybe in long shots -- dance doubles? (The gal in Flashdance had one -- a MAN -- for her big audition scene; rumor has it that when "she" is spinning at top speed, you can see his moustache if you look close.)

In Damn Yankees, Verdon sings a fair amount, dances less. Her "Whatever Lola Wants" number is more of a vamp routine than a dance. However and indeed, Verdon and Fosse dance together and well in the number "Who's Got the Pain?" so...we'll see.

Biopics are generally disappointing -- as "Hitchcock" proved -- but on the other hand, I thought "Feud" got a lot of things right on Crawford, Davis, Jack Warner, and Robert Aldrich. We will have to see where this one lands, I guess. But...Damn Yankees. Emerging for a bit from obscurity?

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And, yes, Verdon was the original Charity Valentine, and the original Roxie in Chicago (Verdon brought the idea for Chicago to Fosse back in the early 1960s).

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Aha. Thank you. It seems that once the "not classically beautiful" Verdon got her shot on screen in Damn Yankees, movie producers didn't much want her on film after that; she became a "Broadway baby" -- and yielded to a younger woman becoming Fosse's wife, and yet...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Fosse died in her arms from a heart attack walking home to his hotel from a rehearsal of a DC revival of Sweet Charity that he and Verdon were supervising. Pretty dramatic!

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I sure didn't know that. What a dramatic end for the series. What a representation of how they maintained a professional relationship long after the marriage was over....