When Hollywood buys a stage play or a musical and commits it to film, changes are invariably made – plays are stage-bound, rely on audience imagination and at least to some degree audience participation. One strength of movies is to be able to move around, so it’s not surprising when plays “open up”, moving beyond the bounds of the stage. So it’s not surprising that the films of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sleuth got away from their single-set stage locations. But they didn’t really make any fundamental changes to the script or plot. Musical may add or subtract songs, but usually only one or two. There’s not a huge difference, really, between the film and play versions of 1776 or My Fair Lady.
But some plays get monumentally changed between stage and screen, and it isn’t always clear to me why. Here’s a partial list. Maybe others can supply more
Lenny – Julian Barry’s play was flamboyantly staged, with lots of weird costumes, asides, and speaking to the audience. The 1974 Dustin Hoffman/Bob Fosse black and white film is more subdued and a more traditional narrative, almost looking like a documentary. It’s a completely different animal, and if Julian Barry’s name wasn’t on the wrapper I’d think it was a case where the film and play shared the name and the subject matter, but nothing else (the way the 1980 David Lynch film The Elephant Man has nothing to do with Bernard Pomerance’s play of the same name). I never understood why the change was made.
A Man for All Seasons – one of my all-time favorite movies, and plays, both written by Robert Bolt. But the play is very stylized, with one actor in black leotard playing several roles as “The Common Man” (He plays Matthew, Sir Thomas’ servant, for instance, as well as the Executioner, and other roles), and who frankly and directly addresses the audience. Again, though, the filom made it less thesatrical and more realistic, and cut out a few of the more clever lines. It did give us actual shots of the River, which is only referred to (along with “water” in many guises) during the play in a deeply symbolic way. This is the only play of Bolt’s that really has that structrure, at least of the many that I’ve read.
Amadeus – Peter Shaffer’s play was another in which a character – Salieri – directly addresses the audience, but thios was completely removed for the film, which substituted a father confessor. Again, the film takes advantage of its medium to actually show the operas being performed (in their original venues, in many cases), but I felt the film lost a great deal. In the play, I felt that I was within Salieri’s madness, and it made a sort of sense. I don’t get that from the film at all.
West Side Story – the play was restructured considerably, and song lyrics changed. I think I can understand why – putting “Seargent Krupke” after the knife fight might be a way to lighten the mood, but it’s better not to try. And lyrics that were OK for a late 1950s stage production were still too rough for a movie at the time.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – the stage play was written by Larry Gelbart (who brought M.A.S.H. to TV) They rewrote it (actually, Dr. Who’s brother, Michael Pertwee, and they put Dr. Who, Jon Pertwee, into it in a brief role) in part to give Phil Silvers a bigger part. I like the film, overall, but I never understood why they cut out most of the songs.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas – They didn’t really make huge changes, but Dolly Parton added a couple of songs (which I can’t complain about) – the bigger problem here was the casting Larry L. King, who wrote not only the original Playboy article that spawned it, but co-wrote the bo0ok of the play as well, hated the casting, thinking Dolly Parton too over-the-top and Burt Reynolds to smarmy. (Actually, I liked the casting of Reynolds, and Jim Nabors, and especially Charles Durning, who gave an unexpectedly good singing and dancing performance). But the biggest change was Reynolds’ buddy Dom deLuise as Melvin Thorpe. On stage, they played Thorpe as a thin, white-haired reporter, based on real-life reporter Marvin Zindler, who was tall, thin, and white-haired. DeLuise played him ridiculously as a shorter, fatter, brown-haired pompous strutter. I suspect they may have been worried about getting sued or something. In any case, the change in casting of the three leads undoubtedly vastly changed the tone of the musical It’s much more severe than the bad casting of Man of la Mancha, where they merely cast two leads not noted for their singing.