Okay, I went to see my sister in the musical, “Anything Goes” at my old high school. (She played Bonnie, btw, the gangster’s moll).
However, the character of Reno made me think-she’s a sexy, sassy evangelist/nightclub singer.
Was the character based on the real life person, the notorious Amie Semple McPherson, who combined sex appeal with religion, and faked her own death back in the 20s? Because that’s immediately who I thought of!
I was in two productions of “Anything Goes” as a chorus member. I remember reading someplace (liner notes in the Broadway album? Sorry, I can’t cite at the moment) that Reno was loosely based on McPherson…
Around the time it was penned, it was popular to parody famous people/society at the time – Bonnie and Moonface, for instance, parodying gangsters, Sir Evelyn as a stereotypical British stick-in-the-mud. I have no idea if they were based on real people.
In any event, it’s one of my all-time favorite musicals! I adore Cole Porter! 
I’ve seen synopses that pointed out the link between the two. I think it’s safe to say that Reno was inspired by McPherson, though she isn’t meant to be a portrayal of her.
A recent interview with Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend of Orson Welles, reveals that Welles said that the actual character of Charles Foster Kane was a composite of three newspaper tycoons, not including Hearst, including one Chicago tycoon who had built an opera house for his mistress, which was more or less depicted in the movie. Of course Welles was, in addition to being the best American director ever, a notorious liar. He also bragged of meeting Hearst in an elevator an inviting him to the premier saying Kane would have agreed to go.
Well, that’s what I thought-I didn’t think she was supposed to be an out and out characature of McPherson, but just loosely based on…
Thanks!
When I saw the show recently, I was thinking less of McPherson and more of performer Texas Guinan, noted for her sassy style and her statement (when her show was banned from France on moral grounds) “It just goes to show that fifty million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.” (She also greeted nightclub patrons with the line “Helloo, suckers!” IIRC.)
A place name for a first name and an Irish-sounding two-syllable surname, along with certain character similarities…
Could be…
Yup. Aimee also showed up as Mrs. Ape, a female evangelist in Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies,” one of my very favorite books.
“the actual character of Charles Foster Kane was a composite of three newspaper tycoons, not including Hearst, including one Chicago tycoon who had built an opera house for his mistress,”
Sam Insull built the Chicago opera house (sometimes called “Insull’s Throne” because it’s shaped like a high-backed chair) but he was an electricity and transit tycoon, not newspapers AFAIRecall.