Bonus video! Fosse's big blowup fight (and Liza's lost Disney film)

Oh my God, the Mortmere stories! I can't believe I forgot to mention the Mortmere stories, I literally only just remembered about them. When Isherwood was at university, he and a friend of his (they might possibly have been romantically involved, but there's no actual evidence for it and also the friend later got married, I think) started writing these really weird short stories, most of which never got finished because that wasn't the point of them, they were just meant as a kind of private joke and a way of dealing with their frustrations about the hypocrisy of society. They are strange and dark and disturbing, and queer in more than one sense of the word. Imagine someone locked John Waters and HP Lovecraft in a room together, force-fed them every drug known to man, and then told them they wouldn't be allowed out until they'd written a work of fiction together. That... still wouldn't be the Mortmere stories, but the fact that this is my best effort at describing them should tell you something. I checked and they are on Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/Mortmere-Stories-Edward-Upward/dp/1870612698/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IZ-njdMYmgrNwBcLgMWblQ.hcqmGl_XhMg_mH3wd_f4dM1I3je0aZoz4_AnpRCfF6c&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+mortmere+stories&qid=1715628637&sr=8-1). I highly, highly recommend them. Even if they're not remotely useful for your video, they are entirely worth reading just for their own sake.

The amazing miniseries Fosse/Verdon covers this!!

I also absolutely love that Sammy Davis Jr number from Sweet Charity! ❤️

I always loved Bob Fosse, especially the movie all that Jazz. He's the gayest none queer person Broadway ever produced

101 dalmatians

Just wondering... Did the industry's dissatisfaction with the film version of "Sweet Charity" make it hard for Fosse to get Broadway work at this time too? Why was he in such desperate straits? The stage version was a hit, right? Looking at his stageography, I do notice that there is a gap in his Broadway work between "Charity" and "Pippin," but part of that would have been time spent in the making of the "Cabaret" film. Were Fosse and Verdon living beyond their means in the late 1960s because they'd banked on the idea that the "Charity" film would open doors for him as a film director? Maybe Broadway work alone wouldn't have been lucrative enough for him to stay afloat during that period?

"We don't talk about that," lol, where do they think they are? The Midwest?

I think there's a little bit of jumbled stories with Disney/Liza/Oz. I think the original story would be that the Liza Minnelli/Walt Disney film would have to be The Rainbow Road to Oz. After the success of The Wizard of Oz (which itself was a direct result of the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), Walt Disney bought the rights to all the remaining Oz books with the intent to make them into animated movies. In the late 50s, Liza would have been the correct age for Dorothy (and it would be a neat bit of stunt casting). But animation hit a rough patch around then, and Walt was more interested in live action. They made sort of a "preview" of a Rainbow Road to Oz (with Annette Funicello as Dorothy) as part of the Mickey Mouse Club but Walt thought it came off as cheesy, so he refocused on upping his live action musical chops on Mary Poppins. A lot of this "lost Disney Oz" stuff came out during the press for Return to Oz and later "Oz the Great and Powerful". Search Youtube. Weirdly enough once the original Wizard of Oz (and its characters) fell into the public domain another animation company, Filmation, cast Liza Minelli as Dorothy in Journey Back to Oz in 1972 (when Disney was at its lowest point both in animation and live action).