Silk Stockings | |
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![]() Original Cast Recording | |
Music | Cole Porter |
Lyrics | Cole Porter |
Book | George S. Kaufman Leueen MacGrath Abe Burrows |
Basis | Melchior Lengyel's story Ninotchka 1939 film Ninotchka |
Productions | 1955 Broadway |
Silk Stockings is a musical with a book by George S. Kaufman, Leueen MacGrath, and Abe Burrows and music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The musical is loosely based on the Melchior Lengyel story Ninotchka and the 1939 film adaptation it inspired. [1] It ran on Broadway in 1955. [2] This was the last musical that Porter wrote for the stage.
During the "severely troubled tryout" George S. Kaufman and his wife Leueen MacGrath were replaced by Abe Burrows. (According to Cecil Michener Smith and Glenn Litton, Kaufman became angry and quit. [3] ) Burrows re-wrote most of the book. The producer Cy Feuer took over the direction from Kaufman. [4] The three leads had not performed in a Broadway musical comedy: Hildegard Knef was a German film and stage actress, Don Ameche never had sung on stage, and Gretchen Wyler was making her Broadway debut. "All three triumphed." [3]
Following tryouts in Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit, the production opened Broadway on February 24, 1955 at the Imperial Theatre and closed on April 14, 1956 after 478 performances. [5]
Directed by Cy Feuer and choreographed by Eugene Loring, the cast included Hildegard Knef (Ninotchka), Don Ameche (Steve Canfield), Gretchen Wyler (Janice Dayton), George Tobias, David Opatoshu, Julie Newmar, and Onna White. [5] Jan Sherwood replaced Knef as Ninotchka and portrayed the role for the show's first national tour. Scenic and lighting designs were by Jo Mielziner and costumes were by Lucinda Ballard. The tour played the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, California starting in April 1956, [6] as well as Los Angeles. [7]
The score "played a large part in keeping Silk Stockings running on Broadway for 478 performances and in helping to recoup the immense production expenses for the show (brought in at a cost of $370,000, Silk Stockings was considered one of Broadway's most expensive musicals for its time)...The big hit...was clearly 'All of You'." [8]
An original cast recording was released by RCA Victor.
The Lost Musicals staged reading of the musical was held in September 2005 in New York City. [9]
Hildegard Knef (original German spelling) gave a vivid backstage account of the casting, rehearsals, tryouts and Broadway opening of Silk Stockings in her autobiography The Gift Horse: Report on a Life (McGraw Hill, 1971) pages 281 through 342.
The musical involves special envoy Nina Yaschenko, who is dispatched from the Soviet Union to rescue three foolish commissars from the pleasures of Paris. Romanced by theatrical agent Steven Canfield, she eventually comes to recognize the virtues of capitalist indulgence. Other characters include Peter Boroff, Russia's greatest composer, who is being wooed by Janice Dayton, America's swimming sweetheart, to write the score for her first non-aquatic picture, a musical adaptation of War and Peace .
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The film Silk Stockings , based on the stage musical, was released in 1957.
Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef was a German actress, singer, and writer. She was billed in some English-language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff.
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Many of his songs became standards noted for their witty, urbane lyrics, and many of his scores found success on Broadway and in film.
Ninotchka is a 1939 American romantic comedy film made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by producer and director Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas. It was written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. Ninotchka is Greta Garbo's first full comedy, and her penultimate film; she received her third and final Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1990, Ninotchka was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2011, Time also included the film on the magazine's list of "All-Time 100 Movies".
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Rouben Zachary Mamoulian was an American film and theater director.
"All of You" is a popular song written by Cole Porter and published in 1954.
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Cy Feuer was an American theatre producer, director, composer, musician, and half of the celebrated producing duo Feuer and Martin. He won three competitive Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. He was also nominated for Academy Awards as the producer of Storm Over Bengal and Cabaret.
Gretchen Wyler was an American actress and dancer. She was also an animal rights advocate and founder of the Genesis Awards for animal protection.
Silk Stockings is a 1957 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. It is based on the 1955 stage musical of the same name, which had been adapted from the film Ninotchka (1939). The film was choreographed by Eugene Loring and Hermes Pan.
Leueen MacGrath was an English actress and playwright and the second wife of George S. Kaufman, from 1949 until their divorce in 1957.
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You Never Know is a musical with a book by Rowland Leigh, adapted from the original European play By Candlelight, by Siegfried Geyer and Karl Farkas, with music by Cole Porter and Robert Katscher, lyrics by Cole Porter, additional lyrics by Leigh and Edwin Gilbert, directed by Leigh, and songs by others.
Jan Sherwood is an American actress mostly known for her work on the stage. She made her Broadway debut in 1944 as Marpha in The Day Will Come. In 1950 she returned to Broadway to portray the Lady in Waiting to Katharine Hepburn's Rosalind in William Shakespeare's As You Like It.
Lost Musicals is a British musical theatre project established in 1989 by Ian Marshall Fisher. It is dedicated to presenting lost or forgotten musicals by famous American writers, and has been responsible for the first revivals of the lesser-known works of writers such as Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Alan Jay Lerner, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern.
Ernest Harold Martin was an American Broadway producer who wrote the book for a musical, owned a Broadway theater and produced motion pictures, including Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Chorus Line and Cabaret. Best known for such hits as Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Cabaret, Martin left his mark on American and international theatre and screen.
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