Topical Guide 674
Mark Dorset
Hopes and Dreams: The Big Break
Performing, Acting
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 11:
“I had hopes of becoming the hostess, and I acted as if I was already being groomed for the job. Actually, I was being groomed for the job; I was doing the grooming. I watched Renée work, trying to find the key to her style, and an amazing thing happened. The first night that the restaurant was actually in operation […] we all lined up so that Renée could inspect us, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was transformed. […] She was in costume. She was playing a part. She could have been another person. […] This onstage behavior, this acting, this role-playing. It was part of the job, I saw, part of the way to get ahead. […] I wanted to have her routine down when she decided to go. I wanted to be ready, like an understudy ready for the big break, when the star falls ill and she gets the call.”
Wikipedia, “42nd Street (film)”:
[I feel quite certain that this would have been one of the old movies that Peter and Ariane watched together when he was eleven and she was seventeen. MD]
It is 1932, the depths of the Great Depression, and noted Broadway producers Jones and Barry are putting on Pretty Lady, a musical starring Dorothy Brock. […]
Julian Marsh is hired to direct […].
Cast selection and rehearsals begin amidst fierce competition […]. Naïve newcomer Peggy Sawyer, who arrives in New York from her home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is duped and ignored until two experienced chorines, Lorraine Fleming and Ann “Anytime Annie” Lowell, take her under their wing. […]
Rehearsals continue for five weeks, to Marsh's complete dissatisfaction, until the night before the show’s surprise opening in Philadelphia, when Dorothy breaks her ankle. […] Marsh to replace her with his new girlfriend, Annie. Annie confesses in earnest that she can’t carry the show, but convinces the director that the inexperienced Peggy can. With 200 jobs and his future riding on the outcome, a desperate Julian rehearses Peggy mercilessly until an hour before the premiere, vowing “I’ll either have a live leading lady or a dead chorus girl.”
Here are Warner Baxter as Julian Marsh and Ruby Keeler as Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street: “You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”:
[to be continued]
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