A Message to Barbra

Dear Barbra,

I hope this blog post finds you well.  I’m just wondering if you’re still considering your much-talked-about proposed film version of Gypsy.  It seems to have been rather on-again/off-again and, to be perfectly honest, I’ve simply lost track of its status.  Every time it appears to be over and done with, well, up pops a rumor about talks being resumed.  If it is, in fact, a dead proposition, forgive this message.  However, if there are still some glimmers of possibility, then here goes…

Most people who love Broadway musicals, and Gypsy in particular, would probably welcome a big-screen remake.  After all, the 1962 film was hardly anywhere near what it could have been, even though it’s far from being among the worst of its era’s movie versions of Broadway shows.  It wasn’t helped by Mervyn LeRoy, a director who had a late-career knack for turning stage material into box-office gold even when, or especially when, he had a sledgehammer’s touch, which he did with Mister Roberts (1955) and The Bad Seed (1956).  But it’s hard to argue with profits.  Thus, Gypsy became another of LeRoy’s visually flat and unimaginative movies.

No one doubts your ability to best Rosalind Russell’s screen performance as Rose, the stage mother of all stage mothers.  (It’s not a fair fight because most of her singing was dubbed by Lisa Kirk.)  Though the great Roz certainly makes an impression, she too often feels like she’s doing a lower-rent variation of her Auntie Mame.  And, let’s face it, one thing Rose is not is Auntie Mame.  Rose was just not Roz’s role.  Yes, the movie should have starred Ethel Merman, in the role she created, or at least Judy Garland, who could have been sensational.  My point is that, despite the Bette Midler TV movie, Gypsy can certainly stand to be remade.  And maybe its time has finally come, with symmetry too good to resist:  you made your screen debut in Funny Girl (1968), the Jule Styne musical that made you a Broadway star, and you could, perhaps, exit your movie-musical career in another legendary backstage Styne show.

Your voice, gutsiness, and humor are inarguably suited to Rose.  The biggest stumbling block—if I may just blurt it out—is your age.  At 71, you are too old to be playing a woman who is half your age at the start of the story, a mother of two little girls.  Yes, you look great for 71, but can you pull off a role that ages from 35-ish to 55-ish?  (Rose is usually played onstage by women in their forties and fifties.)  The character’s biggest of her many big moments, the climactic aria known as “Rose’s Turn,” is the song of a middle-aged woman dealing with, among other things, a mid-life crisis.  Who doesn’t want to see (and hear) you tear into this number?  No problem there.  It’s the first hour or so of the movie that might put a strain on the credibility of your casting.

Forgive my long-windedness as I finally come to my suggestion.  I think it would be easier to accept you as the young Rose if we meet you first as the older Rose.  And it wouldn’t require any rewriting of a sacred text.  What if you just shifted things around a bit and gave the film a Funny Girl-ish flashback structure.  I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that Funny Girl opens with you prowling around backstage and onstage before you settle into a theatre seat for a movie-sized flashback.  Instead of being glimpsed first as the mother of those two adorable tots, barreling down a theatre aisle, we’d instead meet your Rose as the mature woman at the end of the story.  I believe this gives us permission to accept you as the younger Rose, having already made an identification with you as the woman she will become.  Besides, starting the film this way establishes and stresses the backstage-ness of Rose’s entire life.

How exactly would this work?  What if, after the greatest overture in American musical theatre has just accompanied the opening credits, the film began with a suddenly quiet camera crawl through the narrow corridors of backstage?  Voices can be heard faintly, getting louder as we approach a closed door.  For those who know the material, what can be heard is Gypsy‘s climactic mother-daughter showdown, with lines like, “I fought all your life,” coming from behind the door.  When the camera arrives directly in front of the door, you emerge as Rose.  We don’t see anyone in the room as you close the door behind you.  The camera tracks you as you mumble to yourself, finding yourself headed for the stage, positively pulled there.  Maybe some of the lines could be voice0vers from the past, transitioning into the spoken lines that serve as your lead-in to “Rose’s Turn,” such as ”I thought you did it for me, Mama.”  Perhaps you see your aging face in a mirror along the corridor (though you resist the temptation to say, “Hello, Gorgeous”).  Of course, this sequence would stop before you launch into the song, which, of course, would be saved for the film’s real climax, after we have seen and heard that major scene behind the door.  Maybe “What I got in me!” would be a good place to stop this prologue and trigger the flashback, sending us to page one of Gypsy.  When you then enter, you’ll be recognized as a somewhat younger-looking version of the older lady who started the movie, making it easier for everyone to suspend their disbelief.  I really think this will prevent people from muttering things like, “Who is she kidding, trying to pass herself off as the mother of babes?”

If you hate this idea, I apologize for bothering you.  But, if you like it, well, there’s no time to lose.  I wish you had done Gypsy about fifteen years ago, instead of The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), which, come on, was a waste of your time and ours.  Gypsy could be the crowning moment of your career, or it could be a colossal mistake, but, whatever it is, it’s got to be now.

Best to Jim.  And Jason.

Yours,

John DiLeo