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

Lynn Redgrave R.I.P.

Lynn Redgrave died of breast cancer on May 2nd. She was only 67 years of age. Her actor brother Colin, a Marxist fanatic like Vanessa Redgrave, recently passed away. 

Redgrave was superb in GEORGY GIRL (1966), for which she received one of her two Oscar nominations. James Mason (who also got an Oscar nod for the flick), as the rich, much older toff who employed her parents as domestic servants, matches her great performance...

[SPOILER ALERT]

...as we find out the old fart actually loves her in the end, just from a look by that extraordinary actor, sitting on the steps of his house with Georgy's father, who has just asked "Who would want to marry" his daughter. (Unlike a Hollywood movie, they love is not returned, though they do get hitched!)

London's conservative newspaper, The Telegraph, ran a first rate obituary of Lynn Redgrave.

Sandra Bullock Beomes 1st Woman to Win Oscar & Top Box Office in Same Year!

I don't know which one is more unbelievable: That Sandra Bullock won an Oscar or was named the #1 box office star in America. That she won a Razzie Award as Best Actress in the same year is far more in th realm of probability.

Sandra Bullock Becomes 1st Woman to Be Voted #1 Box Office Star & Win Oscar in Same Year