wikipedia
https://youtu.be/8T4Uk7mDR-w
The nasty backstory behind 'A Chorus Line'
http://www.boston.com/ae/specials/culturedesk/2010/11/the_nasty_backstory_behind_a_c.html
Posted by Don Aucoin
November 19, 2010 01:53 PM
The current production of "A Chorus Line'' at the North Shore Music Theatre, which wraps up on Sunday, ends like all performances of this 1975 musical do: the dancers don top hats and join ranks for a jubilant, high-kicking finale.
But it's worth remembering how bitter the real-life aftermath was to the original production of "A Chorus Line.''
The 19 dancers who told their life stories to director Michael Bennett during the taped January 1974 workshop sessions that led to the creation of "A Chorus Line'' signed away the rights to their interviews for $1, according to a New York Times article that ran in October 2006, on the eve of a Broadway revival of "A Chorus Line.'' Although Bennett eventually arranged for them to receive royalties that, according to the Times, sometimes reached up to $10,000 a year, they still felt shafted financially.
The 2006 Times story quoted Wayne Cilento, who played Mike in the original 1975 production, as saying: "We were the authors of the show, and we should have been paid accordingly.''
But the hard feelings apparently ran both ways. In an interview before he died in 1991, Nicholas Dante, one of the coauthors of "A Chorus Line,'' took ferocious exception to the idea that the dancers deserved authorial credit. Check out this quote from Dante, included in the new paperback edition of "Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told,'' by Kenneth Turan and the late Joseph Papp:
"A lot of ugliness came out of all this love, out of this fabulous show. People got greedy; they wanted money. The people from the original taping, I wouldn't say hello to almost any of them if I saw them on the street today. Because ultimately what happened is that because they contributed material they all thought they wrote 'A Chorus Line.' There was such little regard, really, for what went on, they just got greedy and nasty and ugly.''
Harsh words, and another reminder that what happens onstage is one thing, and what happens offstage is quite another thing.
