 GOLDILOCKS
Book by Walter & Jean Kerr: Music by Leroy Anderson: Lyrics by
Joan Ford, Walter and Jean Kerr
Lunt-Fontaine Theatre, Broadway - 11 October, 1958 (161 Perfs)
STORY
ACT I
It is 1913, and the finale of the last New York performance
of the musical comedy Lazy Moon is in progress. The show is moving
on to Chicago, but its leading lady, Maggie Harris, will not be travelling
with it. Maggie has decided to give up the theatre for marriage to millionaire
George Randolph Brown; she declares that she has no regrets about leaving
the world of draughty dressing rooms. Enter film producer/director Max
Grady, who punctures Maggie's euphoria by reminding her that she's under
contract to begin shooting Frontier Woman for him tomorrow morning.
When Max threatens a lawsuit, Maggie reluctantly agrees to honour the
contract. George arrives backstage, and Maggie expresses doubts about
her ability to please the blue bloods of George's family. He silences
her qualms.
At the vacant New York City lot that is Max Grady's studio,
Maggie endures Max's insults and begins to shoot the film. Max, tired
of directing ten-minute quickies, has secretly been using the profits
from his films to purchase (then hide) the elaborate scenery he intends
to use in a long-planned, full-length Egyptian spectacle. Max tells Maggie
that he believes she is drawn to his magnetism. Maggie counters by offering
her own analysis of the situation.
Shooting on the picture ends but Max, without funds
to hire a new leading lady for his next film, tricks Maggie into staying
on the lot to shoot "flashback" sequences for Frontier Woman. In
reality the sequences will constitute his next picture. Maggie protests,
but George says she must do the honourable thing and stay on. Maggie
wistfully confides in an actor in a bear suit, her co-star in the "flashbacks" .
When Max makes advances to Maggie, she calls him "a common, on-the-make
hustler." Max is stung, but also challenged.
At the Fat Cat, a downtown roof garden jazz spot, Lois,
a studio hanger-on attracted to Max, entertains. Max confesses to Maggie
that he tricked her into staying and that he is attracted to her. When
he tells her that he owes the studio thousands of dollars for the scenery
he's been purchasing, she volunteers to stay on and shoot a pirate picture
to help Max stall the studio.
While shooting the new picture on Huckleberry Island,
Maggie admits to Max that she returns his feelings. But when she learns
that George has been summoned by Max's studio cohorts, Bessie and Pete,
to supply the money Max owes the studio, Maggie, believing that Max
wooed her only for the money, storms out. She is forcibly brought back
to finish the pirate film, and George, attempting to rescue her, is
injured in the ensuing mêlée.
ACT II
In a hospital room on the mainland, Lois comforts the
injured George. She tells him that she never seems to be able to find
the sheikhs and princes she always dreamed one day would carry her off.
Maggie appears, and, when George defends Max's motives,
Maggie is outraged. George presents Maggie with a portfolio as a wedding
gift: He has bought her movie, and thus Max now works for Maggie. Maggie
runs off to find Max, and George, left alone, ponders Maggie's feelings
for him.
At Bessie's barn on the Hudson, Max and his cohorts load
the Egyptian scenery on a truck and prepare to skip town with it to California.
Bessie suggests that Max's feelings for Maggie are serious, and he is
upset. Maggie arrives and gloats, but, when Max makes an impassioned speech
about the value of movies, Maggie lets Max keep what is now, in effect,
her scenery. Max's friends are jubilant that they don't have to leave
town after all and remind themselves how important they are to their boss.
George throws a party at his town house following
the wedding rehearsal. When Max arrives, he tells Maggie that he loves
her and that she's only marrying George because "he happens to fit in with
your idiot dream of yourself." Alone in the empty ballroom, Maggie
acknowledges that she must face the truth about her feelings for George.
At dawn on a chilly April 23, with the Egyptian sets
in place, Max's long-dreamed-of epic is about to become a reality.
Shooting begins with a sacrificial pyramid dance and choral chant.
Lois, Max's new leading lady, quickly proves a disaster in the scenes.
Maggie and George arrive, having decided to "send back an awful lot of salad bowls."
A relieved Lois lets Maggie take her place in the picture, and this
time George comforts Lois. But Maggie declares that only a sign from
heaven would persuade her to marry Max. Although it's April, snow begins
to fall in what is supposed to be a scene of intense Egyptian heat:
Maggie interprets this as the heavenly sign, and she and Max embrace
as the curtain falls.
Ken Mandelbaum
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