“Holly did not go lightly.”

There’s a mildly funny piece in today’s NYT about Joe Allen Restaurant, specifically about the restaurant’s eastern wall…

Covering its eastern wall are posters for old Broadway shows, about 50 of them, from the mid-1960s on. Their titles will ring few bells except among the most knowledgeable of theater buffs. There is a reason. Each was a notorious flop.

Included are posters for such notorious works as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (closed in previews), the legendary “Kelly” (Lewis Lapham was invited to document the production of “Kelly” from start to finish; “Kelly” closed after one performance. Lapham’s story was reprinted in a wonderful book called Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway’s Big Musical Bombs.) and “Moose Murders” (closed after one performance: NYT review).

If I ever make it back to NYC, I think I’m going to make it a point to stop by Joe Allen’s place.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2011 at 7:31 am and is filed under Clippings, Loser, Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to ““Holly did not go lightly.””

  1. sween says:
    February 25, 2011 at 8:40 am

    Oh my: “Lestat” – 2006, Music by Elton John, Lyrics by Bernie Taupin. The third flop vampire musical they enshrine.

    Their preview include fifty-two posters. I must assume that’s all of them, and am left to wonder if they’re going for more obscure flops. No “Carrie.” No “Anyone Can Whistle.” No “Candide.”

    I’m actually glad “Candide”‘s not there, as it rightly shouldn’t be considered a flop since it had an initial run of fifty-eight performances. A failure? Without a doubt, but not a flop. I wonder what Joe Allen’s criteria for selection are.

  2. stainles says:
    February 25, 2011 at 9:27 am

    “No ‘Carrie.'”

    I wonder if they had problems getting a ‘Carrie’ poster.

    “I wonder what Joe Allen’s criteria for selection are.”

    Qualifications for the wailing wall are somewhat fluid. “It started out — and this is way, way back — that the show had to cost $500,000, and it had to run less than a week,” said Mr. Allen, who opened his doors in 1965, when $500,000 was real money, equivalent to about $3.5 million today. “But then it all got blurred. Now there are no standards to meet. It’s how publicly big the flop is.”

  3. Lawrence Person says:
    February 25, 2011 at 10:41 am

    Wow, a bad science fiction musical produced by Andy Warhol. That has “legendary debacle” written all over it…

  4. sween says:
    February 25, 2011 at 10:42 am

    Actually, I now see they do have “Carrie.” Curiously, but not surprisingly, it’s the only one that doesn’t prominently have the show’s name on the lobby card. It’s the all black one with the red and white squiggles. It actually does say “Carrie the Musical” in the black of white text at the bottom.

    http://images.cloud.worthpoint.com/wpimages/images/images1/1/0107/06/1_7e55bc28323c1105bd87f53e7982a4c6.jpg

  5. Lawrence Person says:
    February 25, 2011 at 10:49 am

    Also, Carrie is in there. It’s top row, fourth column on the third set of posters (though the name only appears in the small print).