Theatre Register
Elmer Gantry Pt. 2

Gantry

Shows · Gantry

Gantry [14 February 1970] musical play by Peter Bellwood (bk), Stanley Lebowsky (mu), Fred Tobias (lyr) [George Abbott Thea; 1p]. The hard-drinking preacher Elmer Gantry (Robert Shaw), who mesmerizes his audiences as he takes advantage of them, meets his match in the person of the popular evangelist Sister Sharon (Rita Moreno).

Opened
1970
Performances
1
Type
Musical
Era
Revolution
Music: Stanley LebowskyLyrics: Fred TobiasBook: Peter Bellwood

Productions1 on Broadway

1970 George Abbott Theatre Original. February 14, 1970 · Onna White 1 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.

Licensing not confirmed

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In the literature8 passages

The theater’s last show did even worse. Gantry (2/14/70), with Robert Shaw and Rita Moreno, opened and closed in one day. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p207

Gantry was merely an unheralded, negligible flop. Unable to afford an out-of-town tryout, the show played thirty-two underattended previews at the Abbott. book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-a-critical-quotebook-of-compiled-by-steven-suski#p342

Heathen! was also the second (and final) musical from the youthful producers of the Exodus-based Ari. And it was the sixth Broadway musical in less than a year and a half to shutter after only one performance. (All right, Pll name them: La Strada, Gantry, Blood Red Roses, Frank Merriwell, Wild and Wonderful, and Heathe… book:more-opening-nights-on-broadway-steven-suskin#p438

If Here’s Where I Belong was a bleak, dullish show, it was a lark compared to The Yearling (Alvin; Dec. 10, ’65; 3), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel. The Yearling tripled the runs of one-nighters Gantry and Here’s Where’s I Belong. book:not-since-carrie-forty-years-of-broadway-musical-flops-ken-mandelbaum#p160

Despite Jimmy’s $1 million loss, let’s call Gantry (as in Elmer) the biggest flop of the season—not just because it ran one night, but also because its plan to get feedback from out-of-town critics was the biggest flop idea of the season, too. book:broadway-musicals-the-biggest-hit-and-the-biggest-flop-of-filichia-peter-new-yor#p88

Gantry, a musical version of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Elmer Gantry, was a one-night flop. book:broadway-yearbook-2001-2002-a-relevant-and-irreverent-steven-suskin-kindle-2003-#p242

Passages naming this show, found by keyword across 178 books. Where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

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