What happened to the Debbie Reynolds revival of Annie Get Your Gun?

[NoName3]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 5:14am

I am following a Judy Garland discussion on another forum which eventually got around to her aborted film production of Annie Get Your Gun.  Someone suggested that if that unfortunate event had happened just a few years later, Debbie Reynolds might have made a good Annie and then another poster brought up Reynolds' 1977 revival of the show. 

That Los Angeles Civic Light Opera revival was announced from the beginning as intended for Broadway.  It was directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and in addition to Harve Presnell as Frank Butler featured numerous other well known Broadway performers.  It opened to excellent reviews but after playing LA and San Francisco and a short tour, it died. 

What happened?  Why did it never play New York?  I remember the response to the show as being very enthusiastic.  Surely Reynolds and Presnell, in a Gower Champion production, should have been enough to finance a Broadway opening.

[David10086]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 9:21am

After much delays, the Broadway opening was finally scheduled for December 29, 2016. However, fate intervened and that never happened either. I guess it just never was meant to be. 

[smidge]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 9:32am

David10086 said: "After much delays, the Broadway opening was finally scheduled for December 29, 2016. However, fate intervened and that never happened either. I guess it just never was meant to be."

What the ......???

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 9:48am

Humor, smidge. Dark humor, but humor.

[smidge]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 10:11am

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "Humor, smidge. Dark humor, but humor."

I was afraid of that . 

[nealb1]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 10:29am

Could be any of a number of reasons.  I'm assuming the most obvious would be money.  LA Civic Light Opera and San Francisco teamed up for many, many musicals back in the day.  

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 6/25/19 at 11:55am

How about the Debbie Reynolds tour of The Unsinkable Molly Brown? Was that not well received? Were there any plans to bring it to Broadway?

[Demitri2]

Posted: 6/26/19 at 2:46pm

The Debbie Reynolds' AGYG was excellent. I was never a big fan of Reynolds but she couldn't have been better in the role. I was truly impressed with how powerful her singing voice was plus her characterization of the main role was spot on. Gower Champion's direction was so much better  than the last revival. 

Why Reynolds didn't take the show to Broadway has been questioned before since it got great reviews when it played the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. It was mentioned at the time that the reason she might have chose not to return to Broadway was due to the lack of ticket sales for her one woman show "Debbie" that played the Minskoff Theatre shortly before. It tanked after only 14 performances and made Reynolds a bit reticent about playing Broadway again so soon. 

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 6/26/19 at 4:25pm

Debbie Reynolds wrote about this in her autobiography (which I read about 30 years ago). I seem to recall her writing that the show got rave reviews and did boffo business on the road and everyone involved in the production was dismayed when Irving Berlin prevented it from coming to NYC for reasons he never disclosed.

Around the time of the Debbie Reynolds revival (1977 or so) there was also a bizarre story floating in the trades that a film remake of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN was being developed to star Barbra Streisand (I'm not making this up). I have no idea if that could have had anything to do with Debbie's production not coming to NYC, but it does seem a shame her production didn't have longer life. As she described the staging in her autobiography, it sounds like Gower Champion made some smart and exciting decisions with the material.

Updated On: 6/26/19 at 04:25 PM