Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Anatomy of a Flop: "Camelot" (1967)
The movie musical Camelot (1967) doesn't rate as one of the all-time movie musical bombs of the late 1960s that nearly wiped out Gollywood, but it was a disappointment. It's co-stars, Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, were hardly singers (though Harris would score a #2 hit with MacArthur Park the following year).
The stars of the original Broadway musical might have salvaged the film, but Richard Burton was offered a fortune by Warner Bros. to recreate the role of King Arthur but didn't think the musical could make a successful transition to screen. Burton's Guinevere, Julie Andrew, then the #1 box office star in America after the great success of The Sound of Music, turned Jack Warner down. Warner had earlier given her a thumbs down, casting Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady instead.
Here's a detailed look at the failure of the show that had been so memorable on Broadway: "Broadway's Camelot Proved a Disappointment when Transferred to Celluoid."
Sources:
The Cobra's nose, The Lusty Month of May-O
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