When the film adaptation of Cabaret was being assembled in 1971, Bob Fosse was determined to direct it, but Allied Artists executives Manny Wolf and Marty Baum regarded him as a dangerous choice. Fosse’s previous film, Sweet Charity (1969), had been a costly box-office failure, and the executives preferred established names such as Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, or Gene Kelly. Producer Cy Feuer argued that Cabaret depended on sophisticated staging and musical cinematography, warning that a director who treated the songs as secondary could ruin the entire picture. Feuer ultimately persuaded the studio to hire Fosse, who then reshaped the film around the Kit Kat Klub and turned its performances into a dark metaphor for Germany’s collapse into Nazism.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Bob Fosse’s Bitter Fight to Direct Cabaret—and His Reluctant Surrender to Joel Grey
Bob Fosse and Cabaret / 1970s
When the film adaptation of Cabaret was being assembled in 1971, Bob Fosse was determined to direct it, but Allied Artists executives Manny Wolf and Marty Baum regarded him as a dangerous choice. Fosse’s previous film, Sweet Charity (1969), had been a costly box-office failure, and the executives preferred established names such as Billy Wilder, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, or Gene Kelly. Producer Cy Feuer argued that Cabaret depended on sophisticated staging and musical cinematography, warning that a director who treated the songs as secondary could ruin the entire picture. Feuer ultimately persuaded the studio to hire Fosse, who then reshaped the film around the Kit Kat Klub and turned its performances into a dark metaphor for Germany’s collapse into Nazism.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.