. . . Watching the movie version on TCM (another wild Saturday night). Terrific film, haven’t seen it in years–Liza really is marvelous in it, she was never as good again. And isn’t Helmut Griem delicious!
Brings back such nostalgic memories–not of Weimar Berlin, but our scandalous high school production of Cabaret in 1975. Really professional, for a high school production, much better than many Off-B’way shows I’ve seen since: our Sally went on to a minor film & TV career; our Brian writes for the NY Times; our director went on to create Friends. Our Kit Kat Girls really looked like German whores (even my father said he was rather shocked), and our Two Ladies choreography was so blatantly obscene we had walk-outs every night. Nazis, gays, abortions and whores were not done in high school plays back then.
I gave up acting years–goodness, decades!–ago, but the one role I still burn to play is the Emcee. Everyone plays it like Joel Grey, but I would play it as a frowzy, burned-out middle-aged woman, like Rosa Valetti in Der Blau Engel, if you’ve seen that. There’s nothing in the script that says the Emcee has to be a man; I see her as Sally in 30 years. Damn, I’d love to play that role.
I think one of the most effective scenes in a movie comes from Cabaret- where Sally Bowles and co arrive at the beer garden and the Hitler youth (along with the crowd) do the rendition of ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’. It is chilling in light of what happened.
I wonder if that was a trend . . . my high school in Charlotte, NC, did it back in my freshman year. Same year, too. (I played one of the sailors in the nightclub). We didn’t have much money for stage settings, so we built the nightclub, then used lights and a few flats hung from pulleys to suggest other rooms. Unfortunately, no one from our cast went on to stellar careers, to my knowledge.
Really? Get out! I see her and Sally starting to dress and look subtly more alike through the play.
pesch, did you run into parents and teachers trying to censor your play? We sure as hell did.
Cicero, I’m glad I wasn’t in that number, as the performers had to wear swastika armbands . . . Some of them kinda freaked out about it (about half of them were Jewish), but swallowed hard and did it anyway.
I was wondering where you got the idea that the role of the EmCee was meant for a woman? Although the script doesn’t say it had to be a male character, my sources indicate that the EmCee was the director’s (Hal Prince) own concept and was created out of improvised routines between Joel Grey and the director.
Although there may have been a female EmCee in Isherwoods books, it would not have been the ‘same’ character. And there was no similar character in The Threepenny Opera on which all this is based.
If you’ve never seen I Am A Camera it’s worth tracking down. It’s the film version of Isherwood’s original book and Van Druten’s play. The incomparable Julie Harris as Sally Bowles, Lawrence Harvey as Christopher Isherwood and Shelley Winters as Natalia Landauer. Cicero I’m not sure where you got the idea that The Threepenny Opera has anything to do with Cabaret. The source material for Cabaret was John Van Druten’s play I Am A Camera which was in turn based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories.”
One difference is that in the play the subplot has to do with a Jewish greengrocer in love with a Gentile landlady, who eventually dumps him because . . well. . . love is all very well but one must think of one’s future. The dichotomy between the impulses of love and self-preservation in the face of tyranny is captured powerfully in the song, “What Would You Do?” The romance between Helmut Griem and Marisa Berenson in the movie is, IMO, much weaker thematically.
One difference is that in the play the subplot has to do with a Jewish greengrocer in love with a Gentile landlady, who eventually dumps him because . . well. . . love is all very well but one must think of one’s future. The dichotomy between the impulses of love and self-preservation in the face of tyranny is captured powerfully in the song, “What Would You Do?” The romance between Helmut Griem and Marisa Berenson in the movie is, IMO, much weaker thematically. The play’s depiction of fear triumphing over love illustrates the impending darkness of the Nazi regime much more deftly than does the wedding in the movie.
I haven’t seen Caberet since my parents made us watch it when I was eleven or twelve. It was a brilliant film, I’m sure I’d get more out of it now than I did then, though. Must be time to pick up a copy on DVD.
Cabaret’s place in American musical theatre history begins in 1933 with the Broadway premiere of The Threepenny Opera. Based on John Gay’s eighteenth century play The Beggar’s Opera, playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill set their version in Victorian London and told the story of the outlaw Mack the Knife in an attempt to send up the political chaos in Germany during the 20s and 30s. Although it was not an instant success, three decades later a musical that “fixed” Isherwood showed how much it owed to this German import
A friend of mine was Liza’s assistant for a few years.
Prior to that I saw the film 14 times.
Once, sitting in Berlin, watching it at Smoky Kino (a movie theater where you could smoke) a couple of women were behind me and when Liza appeared on the screen, one woman said, “I hear her mother was famous too.”
While working briefly at a restaurant in Berlin, a guy asked me how I liked the city. He was coming on to me. I said, “after seeing Cabaret 14 times, I felt I knew the place.”
He said, “remember me?”
Sure enough, it was Helga…the transvestite from the film who goes to take a pee while Michael York was in the john. He milked the Cabaret film for years, appearing nightly at the Big Eden on KuDamm.
I went to the premere of Cabaret in what was then East Berlin…it was a big deal, to get a West film…the audience was totally in love with the film UNTIL the song, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” (which by the way, was cut from the West German version)…then there was dead silence. I asked my East German lover at the time what was the problem.
“Up until the time that song came, we were almost proud to be German…then, we realized we too could have fallen for the propoganda.”
Ah yes…Cabaret. There are more stories, but I will leave it at that for now.
I know a gay couple who actually live in Christopher Isherwood’s old flat here in Berlin. Not surprisingly, they are from the musical theatre community.
Since Isherwood gathered the material for “The Berlin Stories” when he lived in Germany starting in 1929, I’m still not seeing where you’re getting the notion that The Threepenny Opera has anything to do with Cabaret. There’s no mention in Isherwood’s diaries from the general period, nor in the two Isherwood biographies I have, that Isherwood had ever heard of The Threepenny Opera, much less drew any inspiration from it. Just because two pieces have similar settings or themes doesn’t mean that one inspired the other. What’s your source which indicates specifically that Cabaret was inspired directly or indirectly by The Threepenny Opera?
I remember watching this, thining “God, was Liza Minelli ever limber!” I have been hot for her younger version ever since.
I should probably watch it again. i have a feeling much of it’s significance went right over my head the first time.
I toured with the road company of Cabaret back in the very early '70s (I played Max - one of my first bad guys) and we had to tone down a couple of the scenes for the “sticks” so I can imagine that you had a few walk-outs if you played it full out.
But that being said, I remember the original one (Broadway) and I caught the revival a couple of years ago and the more recent one was markedly raunched up a bit. I’m not entirely sure they improved it with the added raunch. For me at least, that part could have even gotten in the way of the over-all idea.
I know, I know, “If I wanted to send a message, I would have called Western Union!”
I also thought the ending of the stage play was superior–a stark wall and the low roar of the crematoria in the back ground as the MC, dressed in concentration camp clothes and bearing both a yellow star of David and a pink triangle, sings, "Auf Wiedersehen, a bientot. . . "
. . .
drumroll
. . . .
blackout.
