Try, just TRY to find better photos of The Baker's Wife.
(And if you can, send them to me immediately!!)
A production that never made it to Broadway
sort of evaporates on the internet,
unless you don't mind images of productions done
at the junior high down the road.
Back in 1952, it was bubble of an idea,
with music by Frank Loesser and a book by Abe Burrows...
the Baker in question would be played by
Bert Lahr.
That didn't happen.
Fast-forward 10 years, they're now trying to get it off the ground,
with Zero Mostel.
Nada.
Then in the 1970's, Stephen Schwartz entered the picture.
(Don't ask who's in the photo below...
I think it's the Paper Mill Playhouse version!
Again, try to find it!)
Carole Demas (fresh off the run of Grease)
was first cast as Genevieve,
THEE Baker's Wife,
but was quickly replaced with
Patti Lupone (above)
and Topol as said Baker.
They took the show to LA and then to DC,
but Topol didn't actually work out
(Patti loathed him),
and so HE was replaced mid-tour with Paul Sorvino.
Below, Patti with Kurt Peterson who played Dominique
and below THAT, Patti with Topol
(on a good day, it seems. Well, they WERE acting!).
The song "Bread" caused problems from the start,
so much so that it became a running (rising?) joke as
"The Waterloo" of the show.
The director left half way thru the LA run.
They took the only song Patti had away from her
("Meadowlark"), so SHE walked out,
and then things really got bad.
Below, possibly a more appropriate poster for this 1976 production,
the bill for the film it was based on:
La Femme Du Boulanger.
Below, a photo of Alun Armstrong and Sharon Lee-Hill
from the 1989 London Company...
which actually made a cast album.
Another bagel that certainly took its time
reaching Broadway was
Breakfast At Tiffany's.
Despite a creative team and cast to knock your socks off,
it was a throw-out-the-book, change-the-title,
cut-5-songs, no-bring-them-back kinda show.
Mary Tyler Moore was cast as Holly Golightly
(which someone along the way altered to
"Holly Went Badly"),
"Holly Went Badly"),
Richard Chamberlain was Somebody,
and Sally Kellerman Somebody Else (who liked Coffee).
They couldn't solve the problems.
David Merrick took out an ad in the New York Times
announcing that it would not open.
("...rather than subject the critics and
the public to an excruciatingly boring evening.")
So that was back in 1966.
In 2013, they actually did a version of the thing
on Broadway,
with additional music (Bob Merrill's wasn't enough?)
by Grant Olding.
It lasted a few months, then left on a UK vacation,
where I hear it's having a fine time. :)
Thanks to a recording done in 2001
with Faith Prince, Hal Linden, and Sally Kellerman,
we can still sample the original songs
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