![]() To finance the show, Andrew Lloyd Webber ended up mortgaging his house.Īlthough Andrew Lloyd Webber had previously won great acclaim as one of the creative minds behind Jesus Christ Superstar and other hit shows, Cats had a hard time finding investors. (Taylor Swift, Ian McKellen, James Corden, Idris Elba, Rebel Wilson, and Ray Winstone also star.) 6. Jennifer Hudson will play the role of Grizabella. Nearly 40 years after being forced to bow out of the West End production, Dench is getting another chance to star in Cats-only this time she'll play the wise and beloved Old Deuteronomy. Dame Judi Dench left the cast of Cats when her Achilles tendon snapped. ![]() But the dramatic power of the poem made it irresistible to Webber and Trevor Nunn, the show’s original director.īy combining lines from “Grizabella, the Glamour Cat” with those of “ Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” another Eliot poem, they laid the foundation for what became the powerful ballad “Memory.” A smash hit within a smash hit, this showstopper has been covered by such icons as Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow. She not only said “yes,” but provided the songwriter with some helpful notes and letters that her husband had written about Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats-including a half-finished, eight-line poem called “Grizabella, the Glamour Cat.” Feeling that it was too melancholy for children, Eliot decided to omit the piece from the final version of the collection. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, to ask for her blessing on the project. "Memory" was inspired by a poem that T.S. So I was intrigued to see whether I could write a complete piece the other way ‘round.” 3. ![]() “When I written with lyricists in the past … the lyrics have been written to the music. “I wanted to set that exciting verse to music,” Webber said. It seemed like an irresistible challenge. Andrew Lloyd Webber is admittedly "quite neutral" when it comes to cats.įor his part, Andrew Lloyd Webber has described his attitude toward cats as “ quite neutral.” Still, the composer felt that Eliot’s rhymes could form the basis for a daring, West End-worthy soundtrack. However, he came to believe that “dogs don’t seem to lend themselves to verse quite so well, collectively, as cats.” (Spoken like a true ailurophile.) According to his publisher, Eliot decided that “it would be improper to wrap up with dogs” and barely even mentioned them in the finished product. At first, Eliot envisioned the book as an assemblage of Fluffy- and Fido-inspired poems. A whimsical, lighthearted effort, the volume has been delighting cat fanciers for generations-and it could have become just as big of a hit with dog lovers, too. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, published in 1939, is a collection of feline-themed poems written by T. eliot poems that were originally going to include dogs, too. In celebration, let’s take a trip down memory lane to go behind-the-scenes of the musical that started it all. Now, nearly six years after Andrew Lloyd Webber first teased that a live-action movie version of the musical might be happening, we've gotten our first glimpse at Tom Hooper's big-screen vision as the first trailer for the film, which opens in December, has dropped. Although the feline extravaganza divided the critics, it won over audiences of all ages and became an industry juggernaut-one that single-handedly generated more than $3 billion for New York City's economy-and that was before it made a return to the Great White Way in 2016. ![]() Decades after Andrew Lloyd Webber's famed musical opened on Broadway on October 7, 1982, this tongue-in-cheek idiom remains a part of our lexicon (thanks to Saturday Night Live).
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